ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec)

Apple Lossless Audio Codec — the FLAC equivalent in the Apple ecosystem. Compresses PCM to ~50–60% of source with bit-perfect reconstruction; the container is MP4 with an ALAC-encoded audio track.

Native playback support on every Apple device and on most third-party players since Apple open-sourced the codec in 2011. The Apple Music lossless tier delivers ALAC, not FLAC.

Same lossless guarantee as FLAC; choice between the two is ecosystem-driven.