1. Downloading the Macintosh edition

To download the latest version of the MacOS edition of Praat, click once on the following disk image file:

64-bit edition (MacOS 10.11-10.15 and macOS 11-15, for Intel and Apple Silicon): praat6423_mac.dmg (27 October 2024; 39.4 MB)

After downloading, your web browser might open the .dmg file directly; you will then see the program Praat or Praat.app. If your browser did not open the .dmg file, then you should double-click the .dmg file in the Downloads window (or in the Downloads folder in your home directory); after double-clicking you may see the program Praat or Praat.app directly, or you may see a disk icon called Praat6423, which when you open it will show you the program Praat or Praat.app. To install Praat, just drag the program Praat or Praat.app to your Applications folder (or anywhere else).

2. How to start

To start up the Praat program, just double-click it. If you use Praat for the first time, choose Intro from the Help menu.

If you have trouble starting Praat for the first time:
To protect you against harmful software, MacOS enforces increasingly severe security measures, initially trusting only apps that you downloaded from the App Store. This is a good thing, but it does make it increasingly difficult to start up reliable applications that you download from outside the App Store, such as Praat. Your Mac can throw a variety of messages at you:

• If your Mac says “Praat.app is an application downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?”, you can just click Open.
• If your Mac says “Your security settings allow you to install only apps that you downloaded from the App Store”, then you go to the Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Security & Privacy, and set “Allow apps downloaded from:” to “App Store and identified developers” (you may have to “click the lock” to make this change). After this, you should be fine, because the Praat app has been “signed” by us, and we are indeed certified Mac developers.
• If your Mac says “Praat cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer; your security preferences allow installation of only apps from the App Store and identified developers”, than your Mac may not have access to the Internet to check our credentials, but you should still be able to open Praat by clicking on the Praat icon with the right-hand mouse button (or with ctrl-click if your mouse has only one button) and choosing Open.
• If your Mac says “Praat cannot be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software; this software needs to be updated; contact the developer for more information”, than this means that Apple has somehow not managed to “notarize” Praat, but you should still be able to open Praat by going to Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Security & Privacy, seeing the message “Praat was blocked from use because it is not from an identified developer”, and clicking “Open anyway” (you may have to “click the lock to make changes”).

3. Phonetic symbols

If you want to see good-quality phonetic characters on your screen and in your clipboard, you have to install the Charis SIL and/or the Doulos SIL font. These fonts were created by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. To install them, first download the archives:

CharisSIL-6.200.zip (February 2023)

DoulosSIL-6.200.zip (February 2023)

Then unpack the .zip files, if your web browser has not already done that. This will give you folders called CharisSIL-6.200 and DoulosSIL-6.200. When you open these folders, you will see TrueType fonts such as CharisSIL-Regular.ttf, CharisSIL-Bold.ttf, CharisSIL-Italic.ttf, and CharisSIL-BoldItalic.ttf, and DoulosSIL-Regular.ttf. For each of these five fonts, double-click it, wait for the Font Book window to appear, and then click Install Font.

4. Problems with sound

Recording. If your recorded sound is all zeroes, then you may have disallowed Praat to access the microphone; in that case, go to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Microphone and put a check mark next to the Praat symbol.

Playing on macOS 11 BigSur or macOS 12 Monterey. If there is a click or crack at the end of a sound, go to Praat -> Preferences -> Sound playing preferences, and set Silence After to 0.5 seconds or so.

Playing on macOS 10.14 or 10.15. It is possible that your sounds play terribly, with cracks, repetitions and pauses. A likely cause is a macOS bug that you can solve: open Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications -> Utilities), go to MacBook internal loudspeakers (or so) -> Output, change the Format from 48000 Hz to 44100 Hz, and play a sound again in Praat, which should now sound correctly. Even though your Mac will change this setting back to 48000 Hz, sound output is likely to continue to sound correctly.

5. Tuning Praat to your Macintosh

Sounds are recorded into a buffer whose size you can set with “Sound recording preferences”.

The best way to produce pictures is to use the clipboard or “Save as PDF file...” in the Picture window. Both the clipboard and “Save as PDF file...” produce PDF pictures. Most word-processing programs newer than 2006 accept such PDF pictures, at least on the Mac; if you use Microsoft Word 2008 or later, make sure to save your document as a .docx file, because if you save it as a .doc file, Word will convert the inserted PDF pictures into mediocre bitmaps.

6. Running Praat from the command line

To run Praat from a terminal window, write a Praat script and specify that script on the command line, optionally with arguments, e.g.:

For details see Calling from the command line in the Scripting manual.

7. Editions of Praat for older computers or operating system versions

On a modern computer you would use Praat 6.4.23, as suggested above. If that does not work on your computer, you can probably try an older version:

• On MacOS 10.9 or 10.10, try Praat 6.3.09 of 2 March 2023.
• On MacOS 10.7 or 10.8, try Praat 6.1.16 of 6 June 2020.
• On MacOS 10.5 or 10.6 with an Intel processor, try Praat 6.0.16 of 5 April 2016.
• If you want to copy-paste to Word 2004, or to open the audio in a movie, or to open Sound Designer II files, try Praat 5.3.14 of 28 April 2012.
• On MacOS 10.5 with a PowerPC processor, try Praat 5.2.17 of 2 March 2011.
• On MacOS 10.4, try Praat 5.2.17 of 2 March 2011.
• On MacOS 10.2 or 10.3, try Praat 5.1.19 (dmg or sit) of 21 October 2009.
• On MacOS 10.1, try Praat 4.1.13 of 22 October 2003.
• On System 8.5 to 9.2, try praat4501_mac9.sit of 28 October 2006 and install the fonts from silipa93.sit. Use File/Info in the Finder to give Praat one third of your computer's memory.
• On System 7, try praat4223_mac7.sit of 17 November 2004 and install the fonts from silipa93.sit. Use File/Info in the Finder to give Praat one third of your computer's memory.