How to Extract Audio from Any Video — Free

Pull the soundtrack out of any video file and save it as an MP3 or WAV — great for lectures, concert clips, and voiceovers, all in your browser.

Every video file is two things wearing one trench coat: a picture track and a sound track. And sometimes the picture is the boring part. A lecture recorded from the back of a hall, a concert clip where the filming is shaky but the audio rips, a voice memo trapped inside a screen recording, these are all audio files waiting to be set free.

Pulling the sound out gives you an MP3 or WAV you can actually use: replay it on the commute, trim it down, drop it into a podcast. The Audio Extractor does the whole job in your browser. No uploading a 2 GB video to somebody’s server, no account, no watermark. Drop the video in, pick MP3 or WAV, download the audio.

Open Audio Extractor →

What’s actually happening in there

There’s no magic involved. A video container like MP4 just bundles a video stream and an audio stream together. Extraction decodes the audio stream and saves it as its own file. Your video is untouched, you simply end up with a second file, the sound, sitting next to it.

WAV saves the decoded audio exactly as your browser heard it. Nothing lost, nothing added. MP3 re-encodes it smaller, which technically throws data away, but here’s the reality check: the audio inside most MP4s was already compressed once. A second pass at 192 kbps is inaudible to human ears. I’ve A/B tested this more times than I can count and I can’t hear it. You won’t either.

The four-click version

Open the Audio Extractor and drop your video in. MP4, WebM, MOV, if your browser can play it, the tool can crack it open.
Pick MP3 or WAV. MP3 for sharing and phones, WAV if you plan to edit it later. (More on that choice below.)
Hit process. Your browser decodes the audio stream. A music video takes seconds; a two-hour lecture takes a little longer. Go make tea.
Download. That’s the whole job. The file is yours now, play it anywhere, send it to a friend, run it through another tool.

Only want thirty seconds of it? Run the result through the Audio Trimmer and cut straight to the good part.

MP3 or WAV: decide in ten seconds

Take MP3 when the file needs to travel. It’s roughly a tenth the size of WAV, plays on literally everything ever made, and it’s the right call for sharing, emailing, or loading onto a phone. Spoken word? 128 kbps is plenty, voices don’t need more. Music? 192 kbps and you’re done. I can’t hear the difference from the original, and neither will your listeners.

Take WAV when the file is going back into the workshop: you’re going to edit it, normalize it, or archive it. Uncompressed means zero generational loss no matter how many tools you chain afterward. The price is size, about 10 MB per minute of stereo, so don’t email it to anyone.

What it can’t do (read this first)

It needs the actual file. This tool opens video files on your device. It can’t reach into a streaming site, and it can’t touch DRM-protected stuff. A YouTube link pasted into the upload box does nothing, download the file first, assuming you have the right to.
Your browser is the decoder. If your browser can play it, the tool can extract it. MP4, WebM, and MOV are all fine in Chrome and Edge. Some exotic codec from 2007? If it won’t play in a tab, it won’t extract here either.
Big videos eat RAM. Decoding happens in memory, so a three-hour recording on a Chromebook with 4 GB of RAM is going to wheeze. Trim the video to the part you need first and save everyone the trouble.
No subtitles. You get the sound track. Captions and subtitle tracks stay with the video.

Five things actually worth doing with the file

An extracted MP3 sitting on your desktop is a means, not an end. The greatest hits:

Ringtones. Rip the chorus out of a concert video and trim it into a proper ringtone with the Ringtone Maker.
Podcast material. Pull dialogue from an interview or screen recording, scrub the room noise with the Noise Reducer, then level it to podcast loudness with the Audio Normalizer. That’s a publishable episode right there.
Lecture archives. A two-hour lecture as MP3 is a fraction of the video’s size and drops straight into any podcast app. Commute revision, sorted.
Samples. Producers have been lifting drum breaks and vocal chops from video forever. Just clear the rights before you release anything, "found it on the internet" is not a license.
Transcripts. Feed the MP3 to any transcription service and get searchable notes from a talk or meeting.

One habit worth keeping: don’t delete the original video. Re-extracting from the source always beats re-encoding a copy of a copy.

Frequently asked questions

Will extracting audio reduce the sound quality?

Practically nothing. WAV keeps the decoded audio bit-for-bit. MP3 re-encodes it, but at 192 kbps the loss is inaudible, and remember the audio inside the video was already compressed once. You’re not degrading a pristine master. You’re copying a copy, carefully.

Which video formats are supported?

Whatever your browser can play: MP4, WebM, and MOV work reliably in Chrome and Edge. Quick test, if the video plays in a browser tab, its audio will extract. If it doesn’t play, it won’t extract.

Is my video uploaded to a server?

Nope. It never leaves your device. Everything runs locally in the browser tab, it works offline once the page has loaded, and there’s no account because there’s nothing to sign up for.

Can I extract audio from a YouTube or TikTok link?

Not with this tool. It needs the actual video file on your device, not a streaming URL, so pasting a link does nothing. And ripping from services that don’t offer downloads usually breaks their terms, so I’m not going to help you route around that.

How large a video can I process?

No hard limit, but decoding happens in RAM, so a two-hour video on a thin laptop will crawl. For anything over an hour, trim the video down to the part you actually want first. Your computer will thank you.