What is a voice recorder?

A voice recorder turns what your microphone hears into an audio file. It is the quickest way to take a voice memo, record an interview or a lecture, practice a speech, send a voice message to someone who isn't on the same app, or capture a song idea before you forget it. An online voice recorder does this in the browser, so there is nothing to install.

Tool description

This tool records audio from your microphone right in your browser. Pick a microphone, press Start Recording, pause and resume as you go, and watch the live waveform while you speak. When you stop, the recording opens in a player with a waveform timeline, where you can trim the start and end and download it as it was recorded or converted to MP3, M4A, OGG, WAV, or FLAC. Nothing is uploaded: the audio is recorded and processed on your device.

Features

  • Record from the default microphone or pick any connected one, such as a headset or a USB microphone
  • Record as M4A (AAC), WebM (Opus), or OGG (Opus), depending on what your browser supports
  • Choose the quality from 64 to 256 kbps
  • Turn noise suppression, echo cancellation, and automatic gain control on or off
  • Record in stereo with a microphone or audio interface that has two channels
  • Pause and resume, with a live waveform and the recording time and file size as it grows
  • Trim the recording on a timeline with its waveform, drag the start and end handles, or type the times
  • Download the recording as it is, cut it without re-encoding, or convert it to MP3, M4A, OGG, WAV, or FLAC
  • WebM recordings get their length written in, so players show the duration and can seek in them
  • Keeps what was recorded if the microphone is unplugged in the middle of a recording

How it works

The tool asks the browser for the microphone with the Media Capture and Streams API and records it with the MediaRecorder API. The live waveform reads the loudness of the sound with the Web Audio API, on a decibel scale, so quiet speech still shows. Noise suppression, echo cancellation, and automatic gain control are done by the browser before the sound is recorded. Browsers write WebM files while the length is still unknown, so the tool adds the duration to the file header when recording stops. Trimming and converting run FFmpeg, compiled to WebAssembly, on your device. Keeping the recorded format copies the audio without re-encoding, which is fast and lossless. MP3, M4A, and OGG are encoded at 192 kbps, WAV as 16-bit PCM, and FLAC losslessly.

Tips

  • For speech, leave noise suppression, echo cancellation, and automatic gain control on. For music or other sounds you want to keep as they are, turn all three off.
  • Browsers often record in mono while echo cancellation or noise suppression is on, so turn them off to record in stereo.
  • The Audio field shows the sample rate and the number of channels the microphone records with, which tells you whether stereo is in use.
  • MP3 plays on nearly every device, so it is the best choice to share a recording. M4A is also widely supported and smaller at the same quality.
  • If the microphone list shows only the default microphone, start a recording once. Browsers name the microphones after you allow access.
  • The first trim or conversion downloads FFmpeg, about 30 MB. Downloading the recording as it is needs no download.
  • Recordings are kept only while the page is open. Leaving or reloading it throws the recording away, so download it first.