How to extract audio from a video on your phone

A phone video is a container (MP4 or MOV) holding two tracks: the picture and the sound. On iPhones and almost all Android phones the sound track is AAC, a compressed format that plays everywhere modern.

That gives you two options:

• Copy the AAC track as it is into an M4A file. No quality loss, takes seconds, and the file is small.
• Re-encode it to MP3. Takes longer, loses a little quality (inaudible at 192 kbps or more for most material), but MP3 plays on literally everything, including car stereos and old players.

If the video has no sound track, for example some screen recordings made with the microphone off, there is nothing to extract.

The same steps work in Safari on iPhone and Chrome on Android, with no app to install:

1. Open the MP4 to MP3 converter (or MP4 to M4A for the lossless copy).
2. Tap Choose files. On iPhone, choose Photo Library or Choose File (for the Files app); on Android, pick the video from the file picker or gallery.
3. Optionally set the bitrate (192 kbps by default), mono, or trim start and end times.
4. Tap convert, then download. On iPhone the file goes to the Downloads folder in Files; on Android to the Download folder.

The video is read and converted on your phone, not uploaded, so a 300 MB clip does not use your data allowance. The first time, the page downloads its audio engine once. Phones convert one file at a time to save memory; very long videos are quicker on a computer.

iPhones can do this offline with Apple’s free Shortcuts app. Build the shortcut once and it appears in the share sheet of any video.

1. Open Shortcuts and tap + to create a new shortcut.
2. Add the action Encode Media. Tap the arrow on it to expand its options and turn on Audio Only.
3. Add the action Save File (it saves to Files; you can choose to be asked where).
4. Open the shortcut’s settings (the info button) and turn on Show in Share Sheet, with Media as the input.
5. Name it, for example “Save audio”.

Now, in Photos, open a video, tap Share and choose your shortcut. The result is an M4A file in Files. Shortcuts’ action names and layout have shifted a little between iOS versions; if you do not see an option, search the action list for “encode”.

Android has no single built-in tool for this, and what is available depends on the phone maker. Some gallery and video editor apps that come with the phone can export the audio, often under an export or share option, but labels and availability differ by brand and version.

The method that works the same on every Android phone is the browser converter above, in Chrome or any current browser. Chrome on Android has good media support, so MP4 and most other phone videos convert directly. Downloads land in the Download folder, where music players and file managers find them.

• M4A: original quality, smallest effort, about 1 MB per minute for typical phone audio. Plays on iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and in every modern app. Choose it for keeping recordings, lectures and voice notes.
• MP3: universal. Choose it for car stereos, older MP3 players, some editing and DJ software, and services that ask specifically for MP3.
• Bitrate for MP3: 128 kbps is fine for speech, 192 kbps for music, 320 kbps if you want maximum quality. Higher than the original does not add detail.
• Mono halves the size of speech recordings without any loss you would notice.

If in doubt, take M4A. You can convert it to MP3 later; going the other way does not recover anything.

Often you only want one song from a long concert video or one answer from an interview. Set the start and end times in the converter before you press convert; only that part is encoded, which is faster and gives a smaller file.

On iPhone you can also trim the video first in Photos (Edit, then drag the ends of the timeline), save it as a new clip, and extract audio from that.

• “This video has no sound track.” The video was recorded without audio, or the sound was removed when it was shared.
• The browser cannot decode the audio. Rare for phone videos, more common for files downloaded from elsewhere (MKV, some AVI). The converter names the codec; try Chrome or Edge on a computer.
• The phone runs out of memory. Close other tabs, trim the video, or use a computer for files of several hundred megabytes.
• The MP3 sounds quieter or duller. Check the bitrate; 128 kbps on music can sound flat. Use 192 kbps or more, or M4A.

These methods work on video files stored on your phone: your own recordings, files you received, downloads you are allowed to keep. KiteConvert does not fetch videos from streaming sites. For music or recordings made by someone else, check that you have the right to keep a copy.