How to open .AIFF files (Apple audio) on Android, Windows and Linux

You downloaded a sample pack and half the sounds are .aif files. A producer sent you stems from a session as .aiff, or an app developer handed over a folder of .caf sound effects. On a Windows PC or an Android phone, these Apple formats can leave you without anything to play them.

They’re ordinary audio, and you don’t need Apple software to hear them. Folders, a free file manager for Android, Windows and Linux, plays .aiff and .aif files in its audio player on Windows and Linux, offline and with no account, and finds, sorts and shares them on a phone. CAF is the harder one, as you’ll see below.

What is an .aiff file?

AIFF stands for Audio Interchange File Format. Apple created it in the late 1980s, building on the “Interchange File Format” (IFF) that Electronic Arts had designed a few years earlier. Like WAV, it normally holds uncompressed audio: a perfect copy of the sound, sample by sample. The main technical difference from WAV is the order in which each sample’s bytes are stored, a leftover from the processors Apple computers used at the time.

Because it’s uncompressed, AIFF is big: CD-quality stereo takes about 10 MB per minute, the same as WAV. That’s why it’s popular where quality matters more than space, in music production, sample libraries and sound design.

CAF, the Core Audio Format, is Apple’s newer container, introduced in the mid-2000s. It was designed to get round the 4 GB size limit of AIFF and WAV, so very long recordings fit in one file. A CAF can hold uncompressed audio, AAC, Apple Lossless and other codecs. You’ll find it in GarageBand loops, in sound effects made for iPhone apps, and in some recording apps.

Extension	What it is
.aiff	Audio Interchange File Format, usually uncompressed audio
.aif	The same format with a three-letter extension, from the days when file names were limited
.caf	Core Audio Format, Apple’s newer container with no 4 GB limit

How to open an .aiff file with Folders

On Android

1. Install Folders (it’s in the download section of this site) and give it access to your files.
2. If your sounds came as a ZIP (most sample packs do), tap the ZIP in Folders: it opens like a folder, and Extract all unpacks it. See opening ZIP, RAR and 7z files on a phone.
3. Open the folder. Searching for .aif finds both .aif and .aiff files in the folder and the folders inside it, so you can rename, sort and share them.

To listen on the phone, use VLC for Android: Android’s own media system doesn’t decode AIFF or CAF, so Folders’ audio player says Can’t play this file for them. 4. From an email or chat app, choose Open with → Folders.

On Windows and Linux

1. Install Folders for your system (Windows: setup program or MSIX; Linux: deb, rpm, AppImage, Flatpak, Snap or tar.gz).
2. Browse to the sounds in Folders and double-click an .aif or .aiff file to hear it.
3. On Windows, File Explorer’s right-click Open with menu lists Folders for .aiff, .aif and .caf, as the installer registers all three.

CAF plays on Linux, where Folders uses the system’s own media library. On Windows it doesn’t: the media engine Folders ships there can’t read the CAF container, so use VLC or Audacity for those.

What you can do with it in Folders

• Audition sounds quickly on a computer: open a file, listen, go back, open the next.
• Play and pause, jump back or forward 10 seconds, and drag the seek bar through a long stem or field recording.
• Queue up all the audio on the computer with Toolbox → Music player (in the side menu).
• Rename and move samples into your own folders, share a single sound, or compress to ZIP to send a set back.

Folders is for listening and organising. It doesn’t show a waveform, edit audio or convert between formats; an audio editor does that.

Other ways to open .aiff files

• Audacity: free on Windows and Linux, opens AIFF and most CAF files, and can edit them and export to WAV or MP3.
• VLC plays AIFF and CAF on Android, Windows and Linux.
• Windows Media Player handles standard AIFF files on Windows; CAF support is patchier.
• Any music production program (Reaper, Ableton Live, FL Studio and others) imports AIFF.

Problems opening an .aiff file?

There are tiny files that start with “._” and won’t play. When files are copied from an Apple computer to a USB stick or zipped there, it adds small companion files such as ._Kick 01.aif, sometimes inside a __MACOSX folder. They hold Apple’s extra file information, not sound. Ignore them or delete them; the real file is the one without “._”.

A recording is cut off at 4 GB. AIFF and WAV can’t grow past 4 GB, so very long multitrack or high-resolution recordings are split into several files, or saved as CAF instead. Look for the other parts.

A file has the extension .aifc. That’s AIFF-C, a variant that allows compression. Audacity and VLC read most of them; if one won’t open elsewhere, convert it there.

A CAF won’t play in one app. CAF can hold several codecs, and not every app knows the container at all, Folders on Android and Windows included. VLC reads it, and Audacity can convert a copy to WAV.

Questions people ask

Can I play AIFF files on Android? Yes, with an app that decodes the format itself, such as VLC. Android’s own media system doesn’t, so most phone players, Folders’ included, can’t. Folders still finds, sorts and shares them, and plays AIFF on Windows and Linux.

AIFF vs WAV: what’s the difference? Usually none you can hear. Both hold uncompressed audio at the same quality; they just store it slightly differently. WAV is more common on Windows, AIFF in Apple software.

How do I convert AIFF to MP3 or WAV? Folders doesn’t convert audio. Audacity does it in a few clicks, and the command-line tool ffmpeg can too (ffmpeg -i sound.aif sound.wav).

Can Windows open CAF files? Not reliably with its built-in apps, or with Folders. Use VLC or Audacity.

More audio guides: how to open WAV files and how to open M4A files. Or see all 382 file types Folders opens.