Key facts
- Input
- MOV videos from the iPhone camera, AirDrop, QuickTime Player and the Mac screen recorder; MP4 and M4V work too
- Output
- MP3 at 128, 192 (default), 256 or 320 kbps
- File size
- No fixed cap for MOV — only the audio track is read, so long 4K, 60 fps and HEVC videos work.
- Works on
- Safari on iPhone and iPad, and current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on Windows, Mac and Android
- Privacy
- Converted inside your browser. The file is never uploaded to a server.
- Price
- Free. No sign-up, no watermark, no daily limit.
Why your videos are MOV files
The iPhone Camera app saves every video as a .MOV file (IMG_1234.MOV). With Settings → Camera → Formats → High Efficiency the picture is HEVC (H.265); with Most Compatible it is H.264. Either way the sound is a standard AAC track. AirDrop a video to a Mac and it arrives as the same MOV, and on a Mac, QuickTime Player and the screenshot toolbar (Shift-Command-5) record .mov files too.
MOV is Apple's container. Windows media players, Android phones, car stereos and many upload forms are happier with an MP3 when all you need is the sound.
HEVC and 4K are not a problem
An upload-based converter has to receive the whole video first — slow for a 2 GB 4K clip on mobile data. This page does not touch the picture at all: it reads only the audio samples from the MOV, decodes them in short batches and encodes the MP3 with the open-source LAME encoder. The time it takes depends on how long the recording is, not on its resolution.
Only need part of the clip? Trim it in the Photos app first (Edit → drag the ends → Done → Save Video as New Clip) and convert the shorter copy.
Mac screen recordings and QuickTime
A Mac screen recording only has sound if a microphone was selected under Options → Microphone in the screenshot toolbar before you started; the default is None. If the converter reports that the video has no sound track, that is why — there is no audio to save.
Recordings made in QuickTime Player (File → New Audio Recording) are already audio-only .m4a files; use the M4A to MP3 converter for those.
Private conversion
Your file is opened by your own browser and converted on your device. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no queue, no file-size quota and no copy left on someone else's server. You can even disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded and the conversion still works.
That matters for home videos, meetings and anything with other people in it.
By Furkan Kaya, developer of File Converter App · Updated