Remove silence
Remove silence from audio: every pause longer than you set is cut down to a short one, so a lecture, an interview or a dictation takes less time to listen to. You choose what counts as silence and how much of each pause stays, so speech still breathes. Nothing is uploaded: your browser does the work.
How to remove silence from audio
- 1Drop an audio file in, or click to choose one
- 2Choose what counts as silence, or keep "Quiet pauses (usual)"
- 3Set how long a pause must be and how much of it stays
- 4Click "Remove silence" and save the result
- A shorter recording with the long pauses taken out
What happens to your files
- Nothing is uploaded.Your file is read and processed by your browser, on your own device
- Pauses get shorter, not lost.A little of every pause is left, 0.2 seconds unless you change it, so speech still breathes
- It reports what it took out.The result says how much time was removed, and from how many pauses
What you can do
- Choose what counts as silence: "Only real silence", "Quiet pauses (usual)" or "Also soft background noise"
- Set under "Pauses longer than (seconds)" how long a pause must be before it is shortened, from 0.2 to 10 seconds. The tool opens at 0.5
- Set under "Leave of each pause (seconds)" how much stays, from 0 to 2 seconds. Half of it is kept after the last sound and half before the next, so words keep their edges
- Shorten a long silence at the very start or end of the recording in the same run
- Save in the format the file already has, or as MP3, M4A (AAC), WAV or OGG (Opus)
- Open MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, OPUS, FLAC and WebM files, and the sound of MP4, MOV and MKV videos
Good to know
- If no pause of that length is found, nothing is saved and the tool says so. Try a shorter pause length or a less strict setting for silence
- What is left of a pause must be shorter than the pause itself, or the tool won't start
- With "Also soft background noise", very soft sounds count as silence too. Listen to the result before you throw the original away
- The sound is decoded and encoded again. "Same as the original" keeps the format at a bitrate not below the original's. A FLAC is saved as WAV, which is lossless too
- It works best in desktop Chrome or Edge. We tested it with an hour-long MP3 on a desktop computer
Questions
How do I remove silence from an MP3 or a voice recording?
Drop the file in and click "Remove silence". With the settings as they are, every quiet pause longer than 0.5 seconds is cut down to 0.2 seconds. The shorter file is saved to your device.
Will it cut off the start of words?
It is built not to. Of every pause a short piece stays on both sides, right after the last sound and right before the next. If speech still sounds clipped, raise "Leave of each pause (seconds)".
The tool found no pauses. What now?
Your recording has noise in its pauses, or the pauses are short. Choose "Also soft background noise", or lower "Pauses longer than (seconds)", and run it again.
Does it remove background noise?
No. It only takes out stretches in which nothing is louder than the level you chose. Noise under the speech stays as it is.
Is my recording uploaded?
No. Nothing is uploaded. The file is read and processed by your browser, on your own device.
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