About Audio Trimmer
Audio Trimmer lets you cut a clip out of any audio file by dragging two handles across a live waveform. Useful for chopping a ringtone out of a song, lifting a sound bite from a podcast, or topping-and-tailing a voice memo. Built on the WebAudio API — your file is decoded into memory, trimmed sample-accurately, and re-encoded as WAV. Nothing is uploaded. Works with MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, FLAC and most common formats your browser can decode.
- No uploads
- Browser-only
- Works offline
- 100% free
How it works
- 1
Drop an audio file
The waveform renders as soon as the file is decoded. Drag to scrub, click to set a cursor, hit space to play.
- 2
Drag the handles
Two handles mark the start and end of your clip. Snap them to the cursor, or type exact times in the inputs below.
- 3
Export the clip
Click Export. A WAV file is rendered locally — no quality loss across the trim — and downloads immediately.
Cutting audio without re-encoding it
Every time a lossy audio file is decoded and re-encoded it loses a little more — the format throws away what it judges inaudible, and doing that twice throws away twice. Most online trimmers decode your MP3, cut it, and encode it again, so a thirty-second clip of a podcast comes back measurably worse than the source.
The trim you want is the one that copies the bytes between two points and touches nothing else. Where the format allows it, that's what should happen: same bitrate, same quality, just shorter.
Where you can cut, and why it isn't anywhere
Compressed audio is stored in frames — small blocks, each decodable only as a whole. An MP3 frame is roughly 26 milliseconds. You can cut on a frame boundary; you cannot cut inside one, because half a frame decodes to nothing.
In practice this means your cut point may land a few milliseconds from where you clicked. On speech that's invisible. On a beat-matched loop it's the difference between seamless and not — which is why music editors work to grids and zero-crossings rather than eyeballed points.
Getting a clean cut
- Cut in a silence if there is one. A cut mid-word or mid-note leaves a click, because the waveform jumps rather than crosses zero.
- Leave a breath of air at the start and end. A clip that begins the instant someone starts speaking sounds clipped even when it isn't.
- Trimming a long recording to send it? Trim first, then compress — cutting removes the bytes entirely and costs nothing in quality, while compressing costs quality on every second you kept.
- Only need the sound from a video? Audio Extract pulls the track out without touching it, and then this trims it.
It runs in the tab, which is the point
Audio is often the most private file someone owns — an interview, a voice note, a recording of a meeting, a therapy session. Uploading it to a website to remove nine seconds is a genuinely bad trade.
This decodes and cuts in your browser using the same engine that plays audio on the page. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and closing the tab is the entire cleanup.
Frequently asked questions about Audio Trimmer
Why does it export as WAV instead of MP3?
Browsers can decode many formats but only reliably encode a few. WAV is the lossless option that's universally writable client-side and preserves the source quality exactly. You can convert the WAV to MP3 afterwards with any audio converter if you need a smaller file.
What's the maximum file length?
Practically limited by browser memory — the entire decoded waveform lives in RAM as 32-bit floats. A one-hour stereo CD-quality file uses roughly 700 MB of memory, which is fine on most laptops but can be tight on low-RAM phones. For longer files, trim in chunks.
Can I do crossfades or volume curves?
Not in this tool — it's deliberately a simple cut. The start and end are hard edges. If you need a fade-in or fade-out, the exported WAV opens in Audacity or any DAW where you can add the envelope in a few clicks.
Privacy, offline use, browser support, and pricing questions are answered on the site-wide FAQ.