Record a voice memo, a quick voiceover or a test take without installing anything. Pick your
microphone, press Record, and watch the waveform and level meter while you talk. Pause and resume
as often as you like. Each take appears below with a player, its length, size and format, and two
downloads: the compressed file your browser recorded, or an uncompressed WAV.
The audio never leaves your device. Recording and the WAV conversion both happen inside your
browser, and there is no server to send anything to. Takes stay in the tab until you download them
or close the page. Just want to check your mic works? Use the Mic Test.
What format your browser records in
Browsers do not share one recording format. The tool asks for the best one your browser supports,
in this order: WebM with Opus, plain WebM, Ogg with Opus, then MP4. Chrome, Edge and Firefox pick
WebM with Opus, a compact speech-friendly codec, and so does Safari 18.4 and later. Older Safari,
on Mac and iPhone, records AAC in an MP4 container and the file is saved as .m4a. The badge on each take shows the exact type the browser
reported, and the download gets the matching extension.
The WAV download is built differently. The tool decodes your take with the Web Audio API and
writes the samples out as 16-bit PCM with a standard 44-byte header. That makes WAV the same on
every browser, at the cost of size: about 5.8 MB per minute in mono at 48 kHz and 11.5 MB per minute
in stereo. Decoding uses your audio device's sample rate, usually 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz. By default
the WAV keeps the channels the browser decoded. Tick "Downmix WAV to mono" to average them into
one channel and halve the size.
Noise suppression, echo cancellation and auto gain
Browsers clean up microphone audio by default because they assume a video call. Noise suppression
removes steady background hiss and hum. Echo cancellation stops your speakers feeding back into
the mic. Auto gain evens out loud and quiet speech. All three help with spoken notes. They can
hurt music, singing or room recordings, where they pump the volume or smear quiet sounds. Untick
them before you record to get the raw signal. A browser can ignore a request, and if it does the
tool tells you next to the checkbox.
If the microphone disconnects
Unplugging a USB mic or Bluetooth headset mid-take ends the recording cleanly instead of losing it.
The recorder saves data every second, so the take keeps everything up to the moment the device
went away, and it appears in the list as normal. Plug the mic back in and press Start to carry on.
Very old browsers without MediaRecorder cannot record at all; the tool says so instead of failing
silently.
Related tools
- Mic Test: check your input level, sample rate and device before you record.
- Text to Speech: turn written text into spoken audio in your browser.
- Webcam Test: check your camera picture and frame rate.
- MIME Type Reference: look up audio/webm, audio/mp4 and other file types.
Frequently asked questions
Is my recording uploaded anywhere?
No. The microphone stream goes straight into your browser's built-in MediaRecorder, and each take is kept as a file in this tab's memory. The WAV conversion also runs in the tab with the Web Audio API. There is no server, no account and no cloud copy. No audio is sent anywhere. The only thing the tool reports is an anonymous count that someone used it. That also means a take is gone when you close or reload the tab, so download the ones you want to keep.
Why did Safari give me an M4A file?
Each browser records in the format its own encoder supports. Chrome, Edge and Firefox record Opus audio in a WebM container, and Safari 18.4 and later can too. Older Safari only records AAC audio in an MP4 container, which is the same thing as an .m4a file, so the tool names it .m4a. The format badge on each take shows what your browser actually produced. M4A plays in nearly every app and phone. If you need one format across browsers, use the WAV download, which is identical everywhere.
Should I download WAV or WebM?
WebM (or M4A on older Safari) is compressed and small, usually around 1 MB per minute or less. WAV is uncompressed 16-bit PCM: about 5.8 MB per minute for mono at 48 kHz (48,000 samples × 2 bytes × 60 seconds = 5,760,000 bytes), and twice that for stereo. Pick WAV when an editor, transcription service or upload form wants it, or when you plan to edit and re-export. Chrome's WebM files also do not store their length, so some players show no duration until they reach the end. WAV does not have that problem.
Is there a time limit?
No limit is set by the tool. The practical limit is memory, because the take is held in the tab until you download it. Compressed audio is small, so an hour is usually well under 100 MB. Making a WAV needs much more room: the recording is decoded in full first, then written out, and an hour of mono WAV at 48 kHz is about 346 MB. A WAV file also cannot be larger than 4 GB. For very long sessions on an older phone, record in shorter takes.
Why is my recording so quiet?
First check that the right microphone is selected in the dropdown. Laptops often default to the built-in mic even with a headset plugged in. Then watch the level meter while you speak: normal speech should reach roughly -30 to -10 dBFS. If it sits lower, raise the input volume in your system sound settings, move closer to the mic, or leave Auto gain switched on. The Mic Test tool shows the same meter plus your sample rate if you want to troubleshoot first.
Can I trim or edit a recording here?
Not in this version. The tool records, plays back and exports, and it does not cut or edit audio. Pause and resume let you skip the parts you do not want while you record, which covers most voice memos. For trimming, open the WAV download in a free editor such as Audacity, or in any audio editor on your phone that can open a WAV or M4A file.