macOS 13 Bluetooth Audio Codecs for Headphones

Apple's macOS 13 (Ventura) natively supports two primary Bluetooth audio codecs for wireless headphones: AAC and SBC. While earlier iterations of macOS offered support for alternative formats such as Qualcomm’s aptX, macOS 13 streamlines the audio architecture by relying on AAC for high-quality streaming and SBC as the universal fallback. High-resolution proprietary codecs like Sony’s LDAC and newer variants of aptX are not natively supported.

Supported Codecs

  • AAC (Advanced Audio Coding): AAC is the default, high-quality audio codec used by macOS 13. It is designed to work seamlessly with Apple devices, including AirPods and Beats, as well as third-party headphones that license the format. It offers an efficient balance of audio fidelity, low latency, and battery conservation at bitrates up to 256 kbps.
  • SBC (Subband Coding): SBC is the baseline standard required by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) for any device supporting the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP). macOS 13 uses SBC automatically if the connected headphones or speakers do not support AAC.

Unsupported Codecs

  • aptX and aptX HD: Earlier versions of macOS supported basic aptX, but Apple deprecated and removed native aptX encoding starting with macOS 12 (Monterey) and continued this policy in macOS 13 (Ventura). As a result, headphones equipped with Qualcomm aptX hardware will fall back to AAC (if supported by the headset) or SBC.
  • LDAC: Sony's high-bitrate codec is not natively implemented in macOS.
  • aptX Adaptive and LHDC: These newer, low-latency, and high-resolution codecs are proprietary and unavailable natively in macOS 13.

How macOS 13 Selects a Codec

When wireless headphones connect to a Mac running macOS 13, the operating system negotiates the audio format automatically through the Bluetooth handshake. If the receiving device advertises AAC capability, macOS 13 prioritizes AAC. If the receiving device lacks AAC support, macOS 13 defaults to SBC. Users cannot natively force a specific codec through standard System Settings, as the selection is handled entirely by the CoreAudio framework.