About the Remove Silence from Audio
Remove the long pauses from a recording: dead air in a podcast or interview, gaps between lecture slides, silence at the start and end of a voice note, or the wait before a song begins. Set how quiet counts as silence and how long a pause must be before it is shortened, and download the tighter recording.
Short natural pauses between words are left alone, and every long silence is shortened to a pause you choose instead of being cut to nothing, so speech still sounds natural. It runs in your browser, up to 100 MB.
How it works
The audio is scanned for every stretch that stays quieter than the silence level, in decibels below full scale, for at least the length you set. Normal speech sits around −20 to −10 dB; a quiet room is usually below −50 dB.
Each silence found is shortened to the pause you choose: half of the pause is kept after the sound before it and half before the sound after it. Silence at the very beginning and end keeps only half the pause. Everything else is kept exactly as recorded.
The result shows how many seconds were removed and from how many places, and the new length.
Assumptions and limits
- Quiet speech, breathing or background music above the silence level is kept.
- The pause to leave must be shorter than the shortest silence to remove.
- Cuts are placed inside the silence, to within 1.5 ms, so no word is clipped.
Worked examples
A podcast with long pauses
With silences over 1 second shortened to 0.5 seconds, a 40-minute interview often loses 3 to 5 minutes of dead air.
A voice note
Remove the two seconds of rustling silence at the start and the pause before you pressed stop.
Noisy recordings
If a fan or hiss sits at −40 dB, set the silence level to −35 dB so the hiss-only parts count as silence.
How to use the Remove Silence from Audio
- Load the recording. Podcast, lecture, interview or voice note.
- Say what counts as silence. How quiet, how long, and the pause to leave.
- Download it shorter. See how much was removed.
Frequently asked questions
How do I remove silence from an audio file?
Choose the file, keep the default settings (quieter than −45 dB for over 1 second, shortened to 0.5 seconds) and press Remove silence. The shortened recording is made in your browser, and the page tells you how many seconds were removed.
What silence level should I use?
−45 dB suits most voice recordings made in a quiet room. If background hiss or a fan keeps the silence from being found, raise it to −35 or −30 dB. For very soft speakers, lower it to −55 or −60 dB so quiet words aren't treated as silence.
Will it cut the pauses between words?
Not with the default settings. Pauses between words and sentences are usually well under a second, and only silences longer than the length you set are touched. Even those keep a short pause, so speech doesn't run together.
Why was no silence found?
Either the gaps contain background noise louder than the silence level, or none of them is as long as the length you set. Raise the silence level, for example to −35 dB, or lower the length, and try again.
Does it remove silence from the start and end too?
Yes. Silence at the very beginning and end of the recording is cut down to half the pause you choose, so the result starts and ends promptly.
This tool runs entirely in your browser. What you enter or upload stays on your device and is never sent to our servers.