Cut and trim MP3 files in your browser. Visual waveform, fade effects, precise controls. No uploads, 100% private.
Drop an audio file here, or click to browse
Supports MP3, WAV, OGG, AAC, FLAC, M4A
MP3 remains the world’s most popular audio format, and trimming MP3 files is one of the most common audio editing tasks. Whether you are creating a ringtone, cutting a podcast intro, extracting a sample from a song, or removing dead air from a voice recording, you need a tool that makes the process quick and precise. Our MP3 trimmer runs entirely in your browser — no software to install, no files to upload, no accounts to create.
When you load an MP3 file, the browser’s Web Audio API decodes the compressed audio into raw PCM samples and renders a waveform visualization. This gives you a visual map of the entire file, making it easy to spot the exact section you want to keep. Loud sections appear as tall peaks, quiet sections as low waves, and silence as a flat line.
MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III) uses psychoacoustic compression to reduce file sizes by removing audio frequencies that most humans cannot hear. A typical 4-minute song in MP3 format at 128 kbps is about 3.8 MB, compared to roughly 40 MB as uncompressed WAV. Despite this 90% size reduction, MP3 at 128 kbps is considered “near-CD quality” for casual listening, and at 320 kbps, even trained ears struggle to tell the difference from the original.
Because MP3 is a lossy format, re-encoding an MP3 file adds another generation of compression artifacts. This is why our tool offers WAV as the default export format — it decodes the MP3 once and saves the result without any additional compression. If you need MP3 output for compatibility, the MediaRecorder option provides good quality with small file sizes.
Custom ringtones are one of the most popular uses for MP3 trimming. For iPhone, ringtones should be 30 seconds or shorter and saved as .m4r format (you can rename a .m4a file). For Android, any audio format works, though MP3 and WAV are most common. Most ringtones sound best at 15-25 seconds with a punchy start that is immediately recognizable.
To create a great ringtone: load your song, scrub through to find the most distinctive section (usually a chorus or riff), set your selection to 20-25 seconds, apply a 0.3-second fade in to avoid a harsh start, and a 1-2 second fade out for a smooth ending. Export as WAV for the highest quality.
Podcast editors frequently need to trim intros, outros, and awkward pauses. The waveform display is especially useful here because speech has a distinctive pattern — bursts of amplitude separated by brief silences. You can easily identify where a sentence starts and ends by looking at the waveform shape. Use the keyboard shortcut [ to mark the start point and ] to mark the end point while listening back.
For cleaning up voice recordings, look for the flat sections at the beginning and end of the file — these are the silence before you started speaking and after you stopped. Select only the section with actual speech, apply a minimal fade (0.1-0.2 seconds), and export. The result is a tight, professional-sounding clip.
For frame-accurate cuts, type exact timestamps in the Start and End time fields using mm:ss.ms format. This gives you centisecond precision. Play back your selection before exporting to make sure the cut sounds right. Use the Space bar to quickly toggle playback, and press [ or ] to set trim points on the fly while listening.
Last updated: March 2026