The relative rate of neutron stars and black holes produced by the collapse of massive stars is highly uncertain. We simulate the stellar collapse of 195 progenitors with masses between $9M_{\odot }$ and $120M_{\odot }$, incorporating a schematic treatment of neutrino flavor conversion. We find that flavor transformation reshapes the explodability of massive stars—especially in the $16–30M_{\odot }$ mass range—and modifies the compact remnant mass distribution. Our findings identify neutrino flavor conversion as a fundamental ingredient in predicting neutron star and black hole populations, while naturally easing the red-supergiant and the supernova-rate problems, as well as reconciling theoretical expectations with the low-mass tail of the observed neutron star mass distribution.

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• Neutrino mixing
• Novae & supernovae
• Particle astrophysics
• Transient & explosive astronomical phenomena
• Numerical simulations in gravitation & astrophysics