Convert MOV to MP3
Pull the audio out of iPhone videos and QuickTime recordings without sending them anywhere.
- Nothing is uploaded
- Works offline after first use
- Open source
- No sign-up, no watermark. The limit is your device’s memory (phones hold less).
Extract the audio from a MOV video, from an iPhone, a Mac or QuickTime, as an MP3 in your browser. It is free, needs no account and adds no watermark, and your files are not uploaded: everything runs in your browser on your device. The limit is your device’s memory, which is smaller on a phone, and after your first run the page works offline.
Your iPhone may take a few seconds to prepare the video first, longer if it's stored in iCloud.
Done
Free, no ads. Support StayPut
Open the network tab. Your files never appear in it.
Add files and run the tool to see every request this tab makes.
Your files are processed on this device and never sent to a server. Reload the page to clear everything from memory.
MOV is the QuickTime container used by every iPhone camera and by Mac screen recordings. The audio inside is almost always AAC, and that is the only part this tool reads: the video can be HEVC, H.264 or ProRes and it does not matter, because the picture is never decoded. That is why MOV to MP3 works here even for iPhone videos that some browsers cannot play.
People convert MOV to MP3 to keep a concert clip as a song, to send a recorded talk to someone who only wants the audio, or to feed a transcription service. Those are personal recordings, often long ones. Instead of uploading a gigabyte of 4K video to keep a few megabytes of sound, this page decodes the audio track in your browser and writes the MP3 with the LAME encoder running in the page.
On an iPhone, open this page in Safari, tap the drop zone and choose Photo Library to pick videos directly. The MP3s save to Files, in Downloads.
Have a different kind of file? The MP3 converter takes any video or audio file.
How it works
- Drop one or more MOV files, or pick them from your photo library.
- Keep 192 kbps for music or choose 96 to 128 kbps mono for talks and voice.
- Convert. The MP3 downloads; the video is never uploaded.
In your browser, not on a server
Your browser decodes the sound track with the same audio decoders it uses to play media on any website (AAC for MP4, MOV and M4A; Opus or Vorbis for WebM; FLAC, WAV and MP3). The samples are resampled to 44.1 kHz and handed to LAME, the reference MP3 encoder, compiled to WebAssembly and served by this site. WAV files are written directly by a few lines of code in the page. A WMA, which no browser plays, is decoded in a background worker by a separately loaded decoder module. Most video runs on your browser's WebCodecs through Mediabunny. For old formats the browser cannot read, the page loads a decoder built from FFmpeg's libraries (LGPL) only when you convert such a file. Everything happens in memory in your tab.
Compared with upload-based tools: Online converters upload the whole video just to keep its sound, cap free files at a few hundred megabytes, and make you wait in a queue. Home videos, lectures and voice memos are personal. Here the file never leaves your device, so a 1 GB video converts as fast as your computer can read it, and the limit is your device’s memory (phones hold less).
Verify it yourself. Give the page a short while after your first run to save itself for offline use, then turn off Wi-Fi or switch to airplane mode and run the tool again. Or open your browser's developer tools (F12, or Cmd-Option-I on a Mac), pick the Network tab, and watch it while you convert. The panel above does the same count for you.
Questions
Why does this work when my browser will not play the MOV?
Playback needs the video decoder, and HEVC is missing from Chrome and Firefox on many computers. This tool only needs the audio track, which is AAC in almost every MOV, and every modern browser decodes AAC.
Can I convert a long 4K video?
Yes, as long as your device has the memory to read the file; a laptop handles several gigabytes. Only the audio is decoded, so it is much quicker than converting the video itself.
What about Live Photos?
A Live Photo’s motion part is a short MOV. Save it as a video from Photos, then convert it here.
How do I get the sound out of an iPhone video without a computer?
Open this page in Safari on the iPhone, tap the drop area and choose Photo Library, then pick the video. Safari hands the page a copy of the MOV, the MP3 is written on the phone, and it saves to the Files app, where you can share it to Voice Memos, GarageBand or a messaging app.
Why is the MP3 so much smaller than the MOV?
Almost all of a MOV's size is the picture. The sound track of a one-minute iPhone clip is under 1.5 MB, so the MP3 comes out a tiny fraction of the video, whatever its resolution. At 192 kbps expect about 1.4 MB per minute of sound.
Is the file uploaded anywhere?
No. There is no server in this process. The page is a static file and the work is done by code running inside your browser tab. Give the page a short while after your first run to save itself for offline use; then you can turn off Wi-Fi and it still works.
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Guides
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