How to Install FFmpeg on Windows, Mac, and Linux

FFmpeg is the backbone of modern video and audio processing. YouTube's transcoding pipeline, VLC's playback engine, Handbrake, Adobe Premiere Pro — they all use FFmpeg under the hood. If you work with video, you'll eventually need it installed on your machine.

This guide walks through installing FFmpeg on Windows, Mac, and Linux, including how to verify the installation and fix common setup problems.

What you'll learn

Installing FFmpeg on Windows and setting environment variables
Installing via Homebrew on Mac (the easiest way)
Installing on major Linux distros using package managers
Verifying the install and troubleshooting issues

What is FFmpeg?

A quick background before we start.

The name FFmpeg is often said to derive from "Fast Forward" and "MPEG", though there is no official definition of the abbreviation. It was originally created by Fabrice Bellard in the late 1990s and is now maintained by a global open-source community. It handles encoding, decoding, transcoding, filtering, and streaming for virtually every media format in existence.

If you've ever compressed a video, extracted audio from a movie file, or converted between formats, there's a good chance FFmpeg was involved.

Installing FFmpeg on Windows

Windows doesn't have a built-in package manager, so the process involves downloading a binary, extracting it, and adding it to your system PATH. It sounds like more work than it is.

1. Download the binary

Go to the official download page: https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

Under "Get packages & executable files," click the Windows logo. This takes you to third-party builds. The recommended source is gyan.dev — the builds are well-maintained and updated frequently.

Download ffmpeg-release-essentials.zip. This includes ffmpeg, ffprobe, and ffplay without requiring additional codecs to be installed separately.

2. Extract the archive

Extract the ZIP to a location of your choice. The path should not contain spaces. A clean option is:

C:\ffmpeg

After extracting, you should have a folder like C:\ffmpeg\ffmpeg-7.1-essentials_build. Inside it, navigate to the bin folder and confirm that ffmpeg.exe, ffprobe.exe, and ffplay.exe are present.

3. Add FFmpeg to your system PATH

This step is what lets you run ffmpeg from any directory without typing the full path every time.

Press Win + S and search for "Edit the system environment variables"
Click Environment Variables
Under "System variables," find and select Path, then click Edit
Click New and enter the path to your bin folder:

C:\ffmpeg\bin

Click OK on all dialogs to save

Important: Close any open Command Prompt or PowerShell windows and open new ones. Environment variables are loaded at process startup, so existing sessions won't pick up the change.

4. Verify the installation

Open a new Command Prompt or PowerShell and run:

bash

ffmpeg -version

You should see output like this:

ffmpeg version 7.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2024 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 14.2.0 (Rev1, Built by MSYS2 project)
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 ...
libavutil      59. 39.100 / 59. 39.100
libavcodec     61. 19.100 / 61. 19.100

Troubleshooting: "ffmpeg is not recognized"

If you get an error saying ffmpeg is not a recognized command:

Make sure you added C:\ffmpeg\bin (not just C:\ffmpeg) to PATH
Check for trailing spaces in the path you entered
Confirm you opened a new terminal window after updating the environment variables

Installing FFmpeg on Mac

If you have Homebrew installed, this is a one-liner.

1. Install Homebrew (if you haven't already)

bash

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

You'll be asked for your Mac login password. The installation takes a few minutes.

2. Install FFmpeg

bash

brew install ffmpeg

Homebrew handles all dependencies automatically. When it's done, verify the install:

bash

ffmpeg -version

That's it.

Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3)

Homebrew automatically selects the right binary for your chip. No Rosetta 2 needed.

Updating to a newer version later

bash

brew upgrade ffmpeg

Installing FFmpeg on Linux

Linux package managers make this straightforward. The exact command depends on your distribution.

Ubuntu / Debian

bash

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ffmpeg

Verify:

bash

ffmpeg -version

Note: The FFmpeg version in Ubuntu's default repositories tends to lag behind the latest release. If you need cutting-edge features, build from source or use a third-party PPA.

CentOS / RHEL / Rocky Linux

FFmpeg isn't in the default CentOS/RHEL repos. You'll need RPM Fusion.

bash

# Enable EPEL
sudo yum install epel-release

# Add RPM Fusion (provides FFmpeg)
sudo yum install --nogpgcheck https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-7.noarch.rpm

sudo yum install ffmpeg

For CentOS 8+ / Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux, use dnf:

bash

sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf install ffmpeg

Arch Linux / Manjaro

Arch's community repositories always have the latest FFmpeg version:

bash

sudo pacman -Syu ffmpeg

Fedora

bash

# Add RPM Fusion
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

sudo dnf install ffmpeg

Verifying on any Linux distro

bash

ffmpeg -version
which ffmpeg

The which ffmpeg command should return something like /usr/bin/ffmpeg. If it returns nothing, FFmpeg either isn't installed or isn't in your PATH.

Building from source (advanced)

If you need features or codecs not available in your distro's package manager version, building from source gives you full control.

Here's the basic process on Ubuntu:

bash

# Install build dependencies
sudo apt install build-essential yasm nasm pkg-config libssl-dev \
    libx264-dev libx265-dev libvpx-dev libopus-dev libvorbis-dev

# Get the source
git clone https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git
cd ffmpeg

# Configure with your desired options
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265

# Build (use all CPU cores)
make -j$(nproc)

# Install
sudo make install

Building from source is also necessary if you're creating a redistributable binary with specific license requirements. I cover that scenario in a separate article.

The other tools: ffprobe and ffplay

When you install FFmpeg, two additional tools come along for the ride.

ffprobe — Inspects media files and outputs metadata

bash

ffprobe -v quiet -print_format json -show_format -show_streams input.mp4

This outputs detailed information about codecs, resolution, bitrate, duration, and more. Essential for debugging encoding problems.

ffplay — A minimal media player built on FFmpeg

bash

ffplay input.mp4

Useful for quickly previewing files without opening a full editor.

Make sure both work after installing:

bash

ffprobe -version
ffplay -version

Summary

Here's the quick reference by platform:

Platform	Command
Windows	Download zip from ffmpeg.org → extract to `C:\ffmpeg` → add `C:\ffmpeg\bin` to PATH
Mac	`brew install ffmpeg`
Ubuntu/Debian	`sudo apt install ffmpeg`
Arch Linux	`sudo pacman -S ffmpeg`
CentOS/RHEL	Add RPM Fusion, then `sudo yum install ffmpeg`

After installing, ffmpeg -version should print version information. If it does, you're ready to start using one of the most powerful tools in video and audio processing.

Check out the FFmpeg basics guide next to learn how to convert formats, extract audio, trim clips, and more.