I was always under the impression that getting FLAC into iTunes involved some clever hackery that someone like me would never be able to comprehend. So I used AudialHub to convert any FLAC files I had to AAC and then imported them.

Little did I know that there was a utility that makes it look like FLAC was part of iTunes. Fluke, developed by designer Dmitry Kichenko, provides a bridge between the widespread lossless format and our favourite music manager. 

Fluke is really quite simple. The installer you download installs the components necessary for it to work: XiphQT, FLACImporter, and Set OggS. Fluke itself is an AppleScript saved as an application bundle. I kept the script inside the bundle editable so it’s all nice and open-saucy.

I’ve tested Fluke this past week and am happy to report that it works perfectly. Just open any FLAC file with Fluke and it asks you whether you want to import it into iTunes. Clicking ‘Yes’ brings up some windows I don’t quite understand (and make no attempt to) but they stay there for about a second, after which the track is imported right into iTunes as it normally would. 

You can then convert that track to AAC or MP3 if you want to load it up on your iPod or iPhone. And that’s all there is to it. Awesome? Yeah, baby!