Silence Remover

How to remove silence from audio

Four steps, all in your browser.

1. 1

   Drop the recording

   MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG, OPUS, WEBM or MP4, up to 100 MB and 30 minutes. The page measures the level every 10 milliseconds and suggests a threshold from the file's background noise.

2. 2

   Set the three values

   The threshold decides what counts as silence, the shortest pause decides which pauses are touched, and the kept length decides how much of each pause stays. The waveform and the cut list update as you change them.

3. 3

   Check the cuts

   Cut regions are shaded on the waveform, and the summary shows the original length, the new length and the time saved. Open the cut list to see each one with its start and end.

4. 4

   Remove and save

   Press Remove silence, listen to the result in the player, and download an MP3 at the bitrate you choose or a 16-bit WAV.

What the settings do

• Silence threshold

  Frames quieter than this level count as silence. The suggestion sits 10 dB above the file's noise floor (its quietest tenth), but never more than half way up to the speech level. Room noise or a hum raises the floor, so a noisy file needs a higher threshold.

• Shortest pause to shorten

  Only stretches of silence at least this long are touched; shorter gaps between words and sentences stay exactly as recorded. A click or tap of 20 milliseconds or less inside a pause does not split it in two.

• Pause to keep

  Each long pause is shortened, not deleted: with 0.3 s, a 4-second gap becomes 0.3 s, half after the last word and half before the next. Choose None to close the gap completely. Silence at the very start and end keeps half the kept length.

• No clicks at the joins

  Each join gets a 10-millisecond equal-power crossfade, so the end of one part fades into the start of the next instead of jumping. Everything between the cuts is copied sample for sample.

When shortening pauses helps

• Lectures and long voice memos

  A recorded class or a walk-and-talk memo often has long stretches while someone writes on a board or thinks. Shortening them makes the recording quicker to replay and to skim for one point.

• Voiceovers and narration

  Narration recorded in takes collects long gaps between lines. Close them to a steady half second and the read sounds tighter, without cutting the breath before each line.

• Podcast and video drafts

  Dead air while a guest looks something up, or the silence before a recording really starts, can go before you edit by ear. Keep a few tenths of a second so the conversation still sounds natural.

• Voice messages you send on

  A rambling voice note with long gaps is easier on the listener when the pauses are shortened. Cutting only the gaps leaves every word you said.

When to leave the pauses in

What it cannot do

• It hears level, not words

  Detection is by loudness only. A quiet word below the threshold can be cut, and an 'um', a breath or a cough above it is kept. Lower the threshold if soft endings get clipped.

• Background noise stays

  Noise that never drops below the threshold hides the pauses, and the noise in the kept audio is not reduced. For a steady hiss or hum, clean the recording with the Audio Enhancer first.

• Audio only

  An MP4 or WEBM video is read for its sound, and the result is an MP3 or WAV; the picture is not kept. From a file with more than two channels, only the first two are kept.

• Memory limits

  The whole file is decoded in your browser, so the limit is 100 MB and 30 minutes. On an older phone, a long file may be slow; split it first if the page struggles.