How to Extract Audio from a Video on iPhone

You filmed a voice memo as a video, or someone played a song and you want just the sound, or you sat through a lecture and don’t need the picture — but your iPhone only gives you video-editing apps built for trimming clips, not pulling audio out of them. Grabio’s “Extract audio (M4A)” tool does exactly that from your iPhone’s share sheet: on-device, free, and with no App Store app to download.

Why you can’t just get the audio off an iPhone video

The Photos app and stock Files app don’t have an “export audio only” option anywhere in their share sheets — you can trim a video, mute it, or send the whole file, but there’s no built-in path to a standalone audio file. iMovie can do it, but that means opening a full video editor, building a project, and exporting just to get a sound file. If the video is a voiceover you recorded, a song someone played nearby, or a lecture you filmed, all you actually want is the M4A underneath it.

How to extract audio from a video on iPhone with Grabio

1. Add Grabio to your iPhone once — it’s a free Apple Shortcut. Get the free Shortcut here and it’s ready in a few seconds.
2. Open the video in your Photos app (or Files app) and tap the Share button.
3. Scroll down the share sheet and tap Grabio.
4. Tap Extract audio (M4A) from the Grabio menu.
5. Choose where to save in the Files save dialog that appears, then you’ll see a “✓ Done — saved to Files.” confirmation alert.

Is it private and free on iPhone?

Grabio runs Apple’s own encodeAudio action directly on your iPhone, so the video never leaves your device — nothing is uploaded to a server, and it works even in airplane mode. It’s 100% free forever: no account, no login, no subscription, and no daily limit on how many times you use it.

Extract audio from video on iPhone: FAQ

What file format do I get?

Grabio saves the extracted audio as an M4A file, which plays natively in the Files app, Music, and virtually every iPhone audio app without conversion.

Does it work on Live Photos?

No — Live Photos aren’t standard video files, so the share sheet won’t offer Grabio’s video tools for them. Use Grabio’s Live Photo to still JPG conversion instead, or export the Live Photo as a video first, then extract audio from that.

Is there a length limit on the video?

No hard limit is enforced by Grabio — since the whole process runs on-device using Apple’s own audio encoder, it handles anything your iPhone can already play, from a short voice memo to a long lecture recording.

Related on iPhone: convert an audio file to M4A, trim a video, or Video & Audio Tools.