How to Extract Audio from a Video: 7 Free Ways

A lecture recording, a client interview, a TikTok with a great line, a phone video of a talk: the sound is the part you need, and the picture is just extra weight. How to extract audio from a video depends on where that video lives.

Quick answer: to extract audio from a video, save the video's audio track as its own file. For a video file on any device, open it in a browser audio extractor such as sipsip.ai's Video to MP3 and download the MP3. For a video link, paste it into Link to MP3. On iPhone, use a Shortcuts shortcut with Encode Media set to Audio Only. On Mac, use QuickTime Player's Export As > Audio Only. On Windows, use VLC's Convert/Save. For full control, run ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -c:a copy output.m4a.

Which method to use: pick by where the video is

Extracting audio means saving a video's audio track as its own file, without the picture. Every method below does that; the difference is where it runs and what format you get.

If the plan after extraction is a transcript rather than a listening file, skip ahead to the last section: most transcription tools take the video directly.

1. Extract audio from a video file in your browser

The quickest way to extract audio from a video online, on a laptop or a phone, is a browser tool that does the work on your device. sipsip.ai's free Video to MP3 converter runs ffmpeg compiled to WebAssembly inside the browser tab, so the video is read from your device and never uploaded.

1. Open Video to MP3 and drop in the video file.
2. Pick a quality: 128 kbps for lectures and podcasts, 192 kbps as a general default, 320 kbps for music.
3. Click Convert to MP3, play the result in the page, then click Download MP3.

It accepts MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, M4V, FLV, WMV and 3GP, with files up to 1 GB, no account and no daily limit. The first conversion takes a little longer because the browser downloads the converter engine (about 30 MB) once and caches it. On phones, very large files can be slow, since the work happens in the phone's memory.

2. Extract audio from a video link

When the video is on a web page rather than on your device, downloading it first just adds a step. Link to MP3 takes the link, fetches the video on sipsip.ai's servers and hands back only the audio. YouTube links return M4A (the original AAC track), while TikTok, Instagram and other public video links return MP3.

On sipsip.ai, a TikTok link comes back in about 5 to 7 seconds and an Instagram Reel in about 11. For social clips, the dedicated TikTok to MP3 converter and Instagram to MP3 pages work the same way with platform-specific instructions.

Guests get one free try a day across sipsip.ai's free tools, for videos up to 10 minutes. A free account adds 15 credits with no card, and each credit covers two minutes of audio.

3. How to extract audio from a video on iPhone

iPhone has no "save audio" button in Photos, but the Shortcuts app that ships with iOS can do it in a few steps:

1. Open Shortcuts, tap +, and turn on Show in Share Sheet so the shortcut accepts media.
2. Add the Encode Media action and switch on Audio Only. Set the format to M4A.
3. Add Save File and turn on Ask Where to Save, so the file goes to the Files app.

Then open a video in Photos, tap Share, and run the shortcut. The result is an M4A file in Files, which plays everywhere and uploads to any transcription or editing tool. Encode Media writes audio as M4A or AIFF only, so for an MP3 specifically, open the video in Safari with the browser method above instead.

4. How to extract audio from a video on Android

Android's built-in gallery and video editors vary by phone maker, so the dependable route is the browser. Open Video to MP3 in Chrome, pick the clip from your phone's storage, and download the MP3 to the Downloads folder.

If the audio is headed into an edit anyway, CapCut's mobile app has an Extract audio button in the editing toolbar: tap the video clip, swipe along the toolbar, and tap Extract audio to get the sound as its own track. Use that when the audio stays inside a CapCut project; use the browser tool when you need a separate MP3 file.

5. How to extract audio from a video on Mac

QuickTime Player, which comes with every Mac, exports audio in two clicks. Open the video, choose File > Export As > Audio Only, and save. Apple's QuickTime Player export guide describes the result as an audio-only MPEG-4 file with an AAC track, which macOS saves as M4A.

For an MP3 instead of M4A, run the file through Video to MP3 in Safari or Chrome, or use the ffmpeg command in method 7.

6. How to extract audio from a video on Windows

VLC media player, free on Windows, converts a video to an audio file without any editing:

1. In VLC, open Media > Convert / Save and add the video.
2. Click Convert / Save, then choose the Audio - MP3 profile.
3. Pick a destination file name ending in .mp3 and click Start.

The progress bar in VLC's main window shows the conversion; the MP3 appears when it reaches the end. If the output plays for only a few seconds, check that the file name ends in .mp3 rather than .mp4, which is the most common slip.

7. Extract audio with ffmpeg (Windows, Mac, Linux)

ffmpeg is the free command-line tool behind most audio extractors, including the browser tool above. It's the right choice for batches, long recordings, or when quality has to stay untouched.

Copy the audio track exactly as it is (fast, no quality change):

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -c:a copy output.m4a

Convert the audio to MP3 at 192 kbps:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k output.mp3

The ffmpeg documentation defines -vn as disabling the automatic selection of any video stream for the output, and copy as a special codec value meaning the stream is not re-encoded. Stream copy moves the existing audio packets into the new file without decoding them, which is why it finishes in seconds and leaves the sound bit-for-bit identical.

Copy the audio track or convert it to MP3?

A video file is a container that holds separate streams: one for the picture, one or more for the sound. In an MP4 from a phone, a screen recorder or a video platform, the audio stream is usually AAC. That shapes the choice:

• Copy the track (M4A) when quality matters or the file is long. Nothing is re-encoded, so it's as fast as copying a file and loses nothing. QuickTime's Audio Only export and the iPhone shortcut produce this kind of file.
• Convert to MP3 when something downstream insists on MP3: an older car stereo, a podcast host, an audio editor template. Converting re-encodes AAC into MP3, a second round of lossy compression, but at 192 kbps speech and most music sound the same to the ear.

WebM and MKV files usually carry Opus or Vorbis audio, which copies cleanly into an .ogg or .mka file; convert to MP3 when you need a format every player opens. The format trade-offs in more depth, including bitrates and file sizes, are covered in our guide to converting MP4 to MP3.

When you need the words, not the audio file

A lot of audio extraction happens on the way to a transcript: an interview to quote, a lecture to study, a meeting to summarize. In that case the extraction step is optional. sipsip.ai's transcribers take MP4, MOV and other video files directly, and Distill takes a video link and returns a transcript, an AI summary and key points in one pass.

Extract the audio first only when the file is too large to upload comfortably. At 128 kbps, an hour of audio is about 58 MB as an MP3 (128 kilobits × 3,600 seconds), while the same hour of screen-recorded video often runs past a gigabyte.

Conclusion

To extract audio from a video, match the method to where the video is: a browser extractor for files on any device, a link tool for anything online, Shortcuts on iPhone, QuickTime on Mac, VLC on Windows, and ffmpeg when you need batches or a lossless copy. Copy the AAC track as M4A when quality matters; convert to MP3 when compatibility does.

For most videos, the fastest start is Video to MP3 for the sound itself, or MP4 to Text when only the words matter. Neither needs anything installed.

Maya Patel

Podcast Producer & Audio Editor

I'm a management consultant at a Big 4 firm. I consume large amounts of information quickly — earnings calls, industry conference recordings, client interview notes.