pulseaudio
brew install pulseaudioSound system for POSIX OSes
https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Software/PulseAudio/
License: GPL-2.0-or-later AND LGPL-2.1-or-later AND BSD-3-Clause
Development: Pull requests
Formula JSON API: /api/formula/pulseaudio.json
Formula code: pulseaudio.rb on GitHub
Bottle (binary package) installation support provided for:
| macOS on Apple Silicon |
golden gate | ✅ |
|---|---|---|
| tahoe | ✅ | |
| sequoia | ✅ | |
| Linux | ARM64 | ✅ |
| x86_64 | ✅ |
Current versions:
| stable | ✅ | 17.0 |
| head | ⚡️ | HEAD |
Revision: 1
Patches:
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/commit/c1990dd02647405b0c13aab59f75d05cbb202336 |
Depends on:
| glib | 2.90.1 | Core application library for C |
| libsndfile | 1.2.2 | C library for files containing sampled sound |
| libsoxr | 0.1.3 | High quality, one-dimensional sample-rate conversion library |
| libtool | 2.6.2 | Generic library support script |
| openssl@4 | 4.1.0 | Cryptography and SSL/TLS Toolkit |
| orc | 0.4.44 | Oil Runtime Compiler (ORC) |
| speexdsp | 1.2.1 | Speex audio processing library |
| gettext | 1.0 | GNU internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) library |
Depends on when building from source:
| gettext | 1.0 | GNU internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) library |
| meson | 1.12.1 | Fast and user friendly build system |
| ninja | 1.13.2 | Small build system for use with gyp or CMake |
| pkgconf | 3.0.10 | Package compiler and linker metadata toolkit |
Uses from macOS: perl (build)
Binaries:
pa-info,
pacat,
pacmd,
pactl,
pamon,
paplay,
parec,
parecord,
pasuspender,
pulseaudio
Service:
| Start now and at login: | brew services start pulseaudio |
| Run directly: | $HOMEBREW_PREFIX/opt/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio --exit-idle-time=-1 --verbose |
GitHub Packages downloads:
| Last 30 days | 35,157 |
|---|---|
| Downloads | 760,580 |
| Analytics install events (30 days) | 12,894 |
| Downloads / install events (30 days) | 2.7× |
Source: GitHub Packages, fetched 2026-11-12T00:52:13Z. Analytics dates: 2026-10-13 to 2026-11-12. Totals exclude downloads from Bintray before the migration to GitHub Packages. Downloads and install attempts measure different things; the difference does not count analytics opt-outs. Definitions and limitations.
Analytics:
| 30 days | 90 days | 365 days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Installs | 12,894 | 29,146 | 129,339 |
Installs (--HEAD) | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Installs on Request | 357 | 701 | 2,139 |
Installs on Request (--HEAD) | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Build Errors | 0 |