How to save only the audio of a video as MP3

Plenty of videos are really audio with pictures attached: interviews, lectures, podcasts filmed in a studio, music clips, a friend's voice message posted as a video. For those, an MP3 is often more useful than the video itself. It is smaller, it plays in any music app and in the car, and it keeps playing when your phone screen is off. This guide shows how to get one and what to expect from it.

Step by step

1. Copy the link of the post from the app's Share menu or from your browser's address bar.
2. Paste it into Videospeichern's paste bar, for example on the Vimeo video downloader for a talk or the TikTok video downloader for a sound. The platform chip confirms the link was recognised. Tap Save.
3. Find the MP3 row. Under the video qualities, the result card shows a row labelled MP3 · audio only.
4. Save it. Tap the row's Save button. A short countdown runs while the conversion starts, then the MP3 downloads.

In a post with several videos, such as a carousel, each video has its own MP3 row.

What happens during conversion

Platforms store the sound of a video in a compressed format, most often AAC, inside the video file or as a separate audio track. MP3 is a different format, so the sound has to be converted. When you ask for the MP3, Videospeichern fetches the audio, converts it to MP3 at a constant bitrate and streams the result to you while it is being made. Nothing is kept afterwards: the MP3 exists only in your download.

Because the file is produced on request, an MP3 can take a little longer to start than a video download of the same clip. Long recordings take longer than short ones. There is also an upper limit on how long a single recording may be; very long videos may be refused as too large, in which case the MP4 is the way to go.

Quality to expect

The MP3 cannot sound better than the audio the platform stored. A song uploaded in good quality will sound good; a voice recorded in a windy street will sound like a windy street.

Converting from one compressed format to another loses a small amount of information. For speech the difference is not audible. For music on ordinary headphones it is hard to hear. If you need the untouched original, for example for audio editing, save the MP4 instead; it contains the original audio track exactly as delivered, and most audio editors can import it directly. The guide on MP4 vs MP3 goes into the trade-off.

When there is no MP3 row

The MP3 row only appears when the item has an audio track. It is missing for:

• GIFs, which platforms store as silent videos,
• videos uploaded without sound, such as many screen recordings,
• photos and image posts.

If you expected sound and see "This attachment carries no audio track", open the post in the platform's own app with the sound on. If it is silent there too, there is nothing to extract. The guide on why some downloaded videos have no sound covers the other causes.

If MP3 conversion is temporarily unavailable, the card says so. The video download still works in that case, and you can take the MP4 and extract the audio later.

Using the MP3

On an iPhone, the MP3 lands in the Downloads folder of the Files app. It plays there directly. The Photos app does not accept audio, and the Music app only imports songs through a computer, so many people simply keep audio in Files or open it in a podcast or audio player that can import files.

On Android, the MP3 lands in the Download folder, where most music players find it automatically.

On a computer, it goes to your Downloads folder and plays in any media player. You can add it to your music library like any other file.

The guide on where downloaded videos go on iPhone and Android explains the file locations in more detail.

Good uses, and a caveat

Common reasons to keep audio: listening to a lecture on the move, keeping a voice message from someone you care about, saving an interview for your notes, or collecting sound for a personal project.

Music is the caveat. A song in a TikTok or a Reel is usually licensed to the platform for use there. Saving the sound does not give you a licence to publish it, use it in your own videos elsewhere or play it in public. The guide on whether downloading social media videos is legal explains the basics.