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MOV to MP3 Converter

A free MOV to MP3 converter for the videos your iPhone, iPad or Mac saved: drop the .mov, keep MP3 or switch to WAV, and download the sound on its own. The video is converted on your computer, not uploaded. One catch, explained below: it needs Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer, because Safari and every browser on iPhone and iPad cannot read the sound in a .mov.

Drop your MOV here or click to browse

MOV from an iPhone, iPad or Mac, up to 500 MB and 30 minutes. Not in Safari or on iPhone or iPad: use Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer.

The video is converted in your browser and is not uploaded.

How to convert MOV to MP3

Get the video onto a computer, open this page in the right browser, and the rest is one click.

  1. 1

    Get the .mov onto a computer

    AirDrop it from the iPhone or iPad to a Mac, plug the phone into a Mac or PC, or download it from iCloud Photos. A Mac screen recording is already there. The cards below walk through each route.

  2. 2

    Open this page in Chrome, Edge or Firefox

    Chrome and Firefox read the sound in .mov files; Safari does not, and every browser on iPhone and iPad uses Safari's engine. If you picked a .mov in Safari, the converter says so before you waste time.

  3. 3

    Drop, extract, download

    Drop the file, keep MP3 at 128 kbps (64 or 96 for speech) or switch to WAV, press Extract audio, play the preview and download. The MP3 keeps the video's name with an .mp3 ending. Up to 500 MB and 30 minutes.

MP4, WebM, MKV or something else? The Video to Audio Converter takes every video format a browser can read.

Get the video off your iPhone or iPad

The converter needs the .mov as a file on a computer. Any of these puts it there.

  • AirDrop it to a Mac

    Open the video in Photos, tap Share, pick AirDrop and your Mac. It lands in Downloads, ready to drop onto this page in Chrome or Firefox. Apple notes that AirDrop may hand an HEVC video to an older device in a more compatible format; the sound is the same either way.

  • Cable to a Mac or PC

    Plug the phone in and import with Photos, Image Capture or the Windows Photos app. Apple's page says the import may convert HEVC video to H.264 unless Settings > Apps > Photos > Keep Originals is on; for an MP3 either version is fine.

  • iCloud Photos or Files

    With iCloud Photos on, the video is already in Photos on your Mac: drag it to the desktop. If the .mov was saved to Files, open iCloud Drive on the computer and download it from there.

  • Screen recordings

    A screen recording made with Control Center is a video in the Photos app, in your Library, so it leaves the phone the same way as a camera video. Recordings made without the microphone have no sound track to extract.

Why Safari and the iPhone cannot convert a .mov here

The converter uses the browser's own audio decoder, so what it can read depends on the browser. Safari, and every browser on iPhone and iPad, cannot extract the audio from .mov files. In the parent page's test of 30 September 2026 (Chrome 154, Firefox 156, Safari 26.6), Safari could not read the sound in any .mov tried, including videos straight from an iPhone with AAC or HEVC, while Chrome and Firefox read the same files. This is a limit of Safari's decoder on this kind of in-page conversion, not of the file: the same .mov plays fine in Safari.

HEVC (H.265) is the High Efficiency format iPhones since the iPhone 7 record by default, and the video track's codec can matter on a PC too. MDN notes that Chrome decodes HEVC only on devices with hardware support on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS (and on every Mac from macOS Big Sur), and that Edge on Windows needs the HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store. On a Windows PC without that support the length may not show and the file may not convert; a Mac with Chrome or Firefox is the sure route.

If a file will not convert anywhere, export it as MP4 with H.264 first. In QuickTime Player on a Mac, Apple's steps are File > Export As and switching from Smaller File Size (HEVC) to Greater Compatibility (H.264). On the phone, iMovie and most video apps export MP4 too.

MOV vs MP4

Two containers for the same kind of content, and the sound inside is usually identical.

  • Both are containers; MP3 is audio

    A .mov is Apple's QuickTime container, an .mp4 is the MPEG-4 one, and both hold a video track plus a sound track, on Apple devices H.264 or HEVC video with AAC audio. Converting to MP3 keeps the sound track and drops the picture, whichever container it came in.

  • Why MP4 converts where MOV does not

    Browsers decode MP4 with AAC sound everywhere, MOV only in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Exporting a .mov as MP4 does not touch the sound; it rewraps it, which is why the export route works on any browser afterwards.

  • Lossy to lossy, barely audible on speech

    AAC and MP3 both drop what the ear is least likely to miss, so the MP3 is a re-encode of already compressed sound. At 128 kbps that is rarely audible on a voice recording; choose 192 or 320 kbps if the video has music, or WAV to keep the decoded sound without further loss.

How big the MP3 gets

An MP3's size depends only on its length and bitrate. A 4K iPhone video and a 720p one of the same conversation give the same MP3, a fraction of the video's size. The converter shows the estimate for your file before you convert.

Output1 minute10 minutes30 minutes
MP3 64 kbps469 KB4.6 MB13.7 MB
MP3 96 kbps703 KB6.9 MB20.6 MB
MP3 128 kbps938 KB9.2 MB27.5 MB
MP3 192 kbps1.4 MB13.7 MB41.2 MB
MP3 320 kbps2.3 MB22.9 MB68.7 MB
WAV 44.1 kHz stereo10.1 MB100.9 MB302.8 MB
WAV 16 kHz mono1.8 MB18.3 MB54.9 MB
MP3 bytes are bitrate × seconds ÷ 8; a WAV is sample rate × 2 bytes × channels × seconds. One MB here is 1,048,576 bytes.

On the iPhone itself

This page cannot do the conversion on an iPhone or iPad, and no page can in Safari's engine. Two honest options: export the video as MP4 in iMovie or another video app, then convert the MP4 on this site in Safari (MP4 with AAC sound converts in every browser); or send the .mov to a computer and convert it there in Chrome, Edge or Firefox.

If the video was only ever a way to record what someone said, skip the video next time. The ParrotNotes app records the sound on the iPhone directly and gives you the transcript, a summary and the action items, free for 100 minutes of recording a month, so there is nothing to convert.

Already have the MP4? Use the MP4 to MP3 converter, which works in Safari too.

Sources

Recording on the iPhone rather than filming? Read: how to record a meeting on iPhone, voice notes on iPhone, how to transcribe a voice memo, recording a documentary interview.

Converting the video is a workaround. Recording the sound is not.

You filmed the meeting, the demo or the interview on your iPhone to catch what was said, and now you need a computer and the right browser to get the audio out. ParrotNotes records the sound on the phone itself and gives you the transcript, a summary and the action items, free for 100 minutes of recording a month. For the MP3 you just made, the free Audio to Text Converter transcribes files up to 10 minutes.

Get ParrotNotes free

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MOV to MP3 FAQ