How does one playback MIDI files on Mac OS X?

Question

I’m on Mac OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite and in the past, I used VLC Media Player in combination with FluidSynth to play back MIDI sound files, but according to the answer to this question, this option is no longer viable. As QuickTime Player does not support MIDI playback, either, as it seems, I am looking for a method to play MIDI files, preferably not using GarageBand, which seems to be the only software on my computer that actually supports the MIDI file format.

What options, i. e. plug-ins, programs, etc., do I have to listen to MIDI on my Mac?

Answer 1

In a terminal window:

brew install timidity; timidity yourfile.mid

If you don't have brew, get it here: https://brew.sh/

Answer 2

The recent VLC 3.0.0 has returned MIDI support and works on macOS.

Answer 3

2022 UPDATE: I now use Cog for all my audio playback needs: https://cog.losno.co/ The latest versions have tons of midi options and support sound fonts too.

Historical answer (QuickTime 7 support is now gone from newer OSes):

Aria Maestosa looks a bit dodgy, couldn't open any of the midi files I downloaded... A better option is probably to install Quicktime 7, which supports MIDI, and still runs in Yosemite, check out http://osxdaily.com/2014/07/20/run-quicktime-player-7-in-mac-os-x/

I also discovered https://github.com/SamusAranX/MinimalMIDIPlayer recently. It is still very basic but the fact you can use custom sound fonts is promising. Hopefully the developer adds a global soundfont setting soon so you don't have to rename your soundfont to match the midi file you want to play.

Answer 4

Aria Maestosa does exactly what I need.

Answer 5

I've recently downloaded Sequences from the Mac App Store (paid) which does the job for basic MIDI playback.

Answer 6

I'm not sure if it works on newer versions, but I was able to play midi's on iTunes 11.4 with little trouble.