How to Edit Audio Online — Without Uploading It

Trim the start and end

Drop the file and its waveform appears with two blue handles. Drag the left one to where the useful audio starts and the right one to where it ends; the grey parts are dropped. Clicking the waveform moves whichever handle is nearer, and with a handle focused the arrow keys move it a tenth of a second at a time (a second with Shift). Play selection plays exactly what will be kept.

Cut a section out of the middle

Switch to Cut out selection and the handles now mark what goes: a stumble, a cough, a phone going off. The audio either side is joined with no gap. Make the cut in a pause rather than mid-word and the join is inaudible; Play around the cut lets you check. One section is removed per pass — save and reopen the result to remove another, or use the dedicated remove-part-of-audio page.

Join several recordings

Add more files and they are joined in the order listed; the arrows reorder them. Each track keeps its own edit, so you can trim the silence off the end of one and the start of the next before they meet. Files of different formats, sample rates and channel counts are converted to one shape automatically — a mono voice memo can follow a stereo song.

Fade in and fade out

A fade of half a second to a second removes the click that a hard start or stop can make, and longer fades suit music. They apply to the beginning and end of the final result, after joining.

Which format to save

The right format depends on where the audio goes next:

• MP3 — plays everywhere; the safe choice for sharing. 128 kbps for speech, 192 for music.
• M4A (AAC) — what Apple devices use; a little smaller than MP3 for the same quality. Needs Chrome, Edge or Safari.
• WAV — uncompressed; for editing software, transcription services and CDs. About 10 MB a minute in stereo.
• FLAC — lossless like WAV at about half the size; for archiving.
• OGG (Opus) — the smallest files, excellent for speech; plays in browsers and most modern apps.

Does editing lose quality?

Cutting itself loses nothing — it works on the decoded samples. Saving as MP3, M4A or OGG compresses again, which loses a little; at 192 kbps and above it is not audible in ordinary listening. WAV and FLAC keep every decoded sample. No format can add back what the original compression removed, so saving an MP3 as FLAC preserves it but does not improve it.

Why some saves take longer

M4A and OGG use encoders built into your browser and are quick. MP3 and FLAC are encoded in JavaScript: a few seconds for a minute of audio, minutes for an hour. The progress bar shows how far it has got, and the page stays usable while it works.

Why not upload it

Interviews, meetings, lectures and voice notes are some of the most private files people edit, and most online editors work by uploading them to a server. Here the audio is decoded, edited and encoded inside your browser tab; there is nothing on a server to leak. You can verify it in the Network tab of your browser’s developer tools while you work.

If a file will not open

The editor opens anything your browser can decode: MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG and Opus, WebM, iPhone ringtones and the soundtrack of MP4 and MOV videos. WMA, AIFF and AMR are not decoded by browsers; convert those with a desktop program first. Very long files need memory — an hour of stereo audio is about 600 MB once decoded — so close other tabs if a long file fails to load.

Step by step

1. Drop one or more audio or video files.
2. Drag the handles to keep a section, or switch to Cut out selection to remove one.
3. Add and reorder files to join them; add a fade if you like.
4. Preview the result, choose a format and save.

Frequently asked questions