Play Sounds

Play Sounds is a lightweight, faceless background application for playing sound samples, ringtones and other types of audio files, including classic System 7 sounds. It requires macOS 10.9 or later and is a 64-bit Universal Binary, built with Apple’s Hardened Runtime, sandboxed, signed and notarized.

Drag files onto the application icon and they will be queued for playing. You can also right-click files in the Finder and select Open With → Play Sounds; or add the application to your Dock and drag files to the application’s Dock icon; or use the Finder’s Get Info panel to assign Play Sounds as the application to be used to open specific files (or all files of specific types) when they are double-clicked.

Play Sounds is not intended to be an iTunes replacement, so it has no user interface to allow pause/resume, volume adjustment, and so on. You can, however, stop it from playing: simply double-click on the application icon, or click the icon in the Dock if you have it there.

Play Sounds was inspired by an application from David Blache called Play Sound, which unfortunately was left behind when macOS abandoned 32-bit apps as of macOS Catalina. If you are still using macOS Mojave or earlier, we commend that older application to your attention.