Mute a video: remove the audio, free

How do I remove the audio from a video?

Add the video above and click to remove the sound. The tool writes a new file with the same picture and no audio track, on your own device. Because the video itself doesn’t need to change, this is usually fast even for long recordings, and the picture keeps its full quality.

When to mute a video

• Background noise. Keyboard clatter, fans, traffic or an open-plan office that drowns out what matters on screen.
• Private sound. A colleague talking in the background, a notification read aloud, a call you forgot was running.
• Music you can’t use. A clip with copyrighted music that a platform would flag or mute anyway.
• Autoplay on websites. Browsers generally only autoplay videos without sound, so hero videos and product loops are best muted.
• A new voice-over. Remove the original sound before adding narration in an editor.
• Silent demos. Short clips in docs, tickets and chat where captions or text explain the steps.

Does removing audio lose video quality?

No. The video track is copied as it is, without being re-encoded, so every frame is identical to the original. Only the audio track is left out. The file also gets a little smaller, by however much space the sound took up: usually a small share of a video’s size, since audio needs far less data than pictures.

Muted video vs volume at zero

A video with the volume turned down in a player still has its sound: anyone who turns it up hears everything. Muting here removes the audio track from the file completely, so there is nothing left to turn up. That makes it the right choice for privacy, for example when a recording caught a conversation that shouldn’t be shared.

Silent videos instead of GIFs

For a looping clip on a web page, a short muted MP4 or WebM is usually a much smaller file than a GIF of the same clip, with smoother motion and full color. Mute it here, then embed it as an autoplaying, looping video. If you really need a GIF, for example for an email or a tool that only shows images, use video to GIF.

Can it remove only the music or only a voice?

No. Muting removes the whole sound track: voices, music and noise together. Separating a voice from background music needs audio software built for that, and the result is rarely clean. For your own recordings, the simpler fix is to mute the original and record or generate a new voice-over.

Want to keep the sound separately?

Before muting, save the audio on its own with extract audio from video. You then have a silent video and a separate sound file, which is useful when you want to edit or replace parts of the narration.

Tips

Add captions or text

A silent how-to needs another way to explain. Add on-screen text in an editor, or make subtitles with the subtitle generator before you remove the sound.

Trim at the same time

If the clip also needs shorter ends, use the video trimmer, or the video compressor, which can trim and remove the sound in one go while making the file smaller.

Listen before you share

Screen recordings pick up more than you think: a notification sound, a colleague in the background, a call ringing. Play the whole recording once with the sound on before you send it. If anything shouldn’t leave the room, mute it here; if only part of the narration is worth keeping, cut the recording into parts with the video trimmer and mute only the part that needs it.