Trim and Cut Audio
Keep the parts you want, or cut sections out, with the waveform to aim at.
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or drag it here
MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, or OGG
- Takes
- MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, and Opus, plus the soundtrack of an MP4, MOV, WebM, or MKV. One file at a time — the waveform belongs to a single timeline. AIFF and WMA are not readable in a browser and will be refused.
- Size
- No cap, and no upload — the ceiling is your own tab's memory. Drawing the waveform decodes the file once, which took about 1.5 seconds for a 12-minute MP3 here; the cut itself takes a few seconds more. Longer recordings work, they just take proportionally longer to appear.
Your file never leaves your browser during processing
How it works
To trim or cut an audio file, drop it onto this page and drag across the waveform to select — then either keep what you selected or remove it and join what is left. Click anywhere on the waveform to listen from that point. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
The file is decoded in your browser and reduced to a waveform: a couple of thousand pairs of peaks showing where the loud and quiet parts are. That picture is what makes cutting practical — the dead air before someone starts speaking, the applause at the end, the gap between two songs are all visible, so you can put the cut where it belongs rather than guessing at timecodes. Drag across the waveform to select, drag either edge to fine-tune, or type the start and end in seconds if you already know them. Clicking anywhere plays the file from that point, which is usually the fastest way to find the moment you are looking for.
You can mark as many sections as you need, and then choose what the marks mean. Keeping them takes those sections and joins them into one file in order, which is how you pull four usable answers out of an hour-long interview. Removing them does the opposite: it deletes the marked parts and joins everything else, which is how you take the ad breaks, the false starts, or the long silences out of a recording. The dark part of the waveform is always what will end up in the file, so the picture answers the question directly rather than requiring you to work it out from the mode. Each section has its own play button for checking just that piece.
Once there is more than one section, you also choose how they come out: joined into a single MP3, or one MP3 per section, numbered in playing order. It is the same read of the same file either way — the only difference is where the encoder is restarted — but the two answer different questions. Joining is for cleaning a recording up into one finished piece; separate files are for pulling three usable takes, or four chapters, out of one long capture and keeping them apart. Separate files download individually or all together.
Playing back uses your browser's own audio player on the original file, clamped to the range you are auditioning, so checking a cut costs nothing and takes no processing. Only when you save is anything actually written.
Cutting re-encodes the audio, and it is worth understanding why, since a cut sounds like it should be free. Compressed audio is stored in frames, and finding an arbitrary moment inside one means decoding the stream to that point; the pieces you keep then have to be written back out as valid frames. So the result is a fresh encode rather than a copy of the original bytes — one generation of loss even though the format has not changed. The bitrate selector defaults to the bitrate your file already has, which keeps that cost to the minimum. Where two kept sections meet, they are butted directly together with no crossfade, so a cut placed in the middle of a word will still sound like a cut.
Nothing leaves your machine. The decoding uses codecs already in your browser, the MP3 encoder is a WebAssembly module that loads once before processing starts, and the counter under the tool watches network activity during the work and stays at zero bytes sent.
FAQ
Can I cut a section out of the middle?
Yes. Mark the section and switch to "Remove selected" — the marked part is deleted and what is left is joined into one file. You can mark several sections at once, which is the usual way to strip ad breaks or false starts out of a recording.
Can I keep several separate parts of a recording?
Yes. Add as many sections as you need and leave the mode on "Keep selected". Then pick how they come out: one file with the sections joined end to end in order, or one file per section. Both options appear as soon as there is more than one section.
Can I split one recording into several files?
Yes. Mark where each piece starts and ends, then choose "separate files" under Save as. Each section is encoded on its own and named after the source with -part-1, -part-2 and so on, in playing order. They can be saved one at a time or all at once.
How do I hear a specific moment?
Click that point on the waveform and playback starts there. Each section in the list also has its own play button, which plays exactly that section and stops at its end, so you can check a cut before committing to it.
Does trimming reduce the quality?
Slightly, because the clip has to be re-encoded rather than copied. Leaving the bitrate at the default — your file's own bitrate — makes the difference very hard to hear. There is no way to cut a compressed file at an arbitrary point without decoding it first.
What formats can I trim?
MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, and Opus, plus MP4, MOV, WebM, and MKV if you want a clip of a video's audio. The result is always an MP3. AIFF, AVI, and WMA cannot be read in a browser and are refused. To join separate files rather than sections of one, use the merge tool.
How long a recording can I cut?
There is no limit set here, and nothing is uploaded, so the ceiling is your own tab's memory. The file is read off disk in pieces rather than loaded whole. Drawing the waveform decodes it once — about a second and a half for a 12-minute MP3 — and the cut itself takes a few seconds more; a much longer recording simply takes proportionally longer to appear.
How precise is the cut?
To a fraction of a second — the time fields accept tenths, and dragging on the waveform resolves to about a thousandth of the file's length per pixel. MP3 frames are about 26 milliseconds long, which is the practical floor for where a boundary can land.
Is the file uploaded to trim it?
No. Reading, drawing the waveform, playing back, and encoding the clip all happen in your browser, and the network counter under the tool stays at zero bytes sent throughout.