How to Remove Audio From a Video on Mac (5 Free Ways, 2026)

By Hieu Dinh

Sometimes the picture is perfect but the sound has to go. Maybe you recorded a clean B-roll shot but the microphone caught a passing car. Maybe you want to remove audio from video because it contains copyrighted music that would get your YouTube upload muted anyway. Maybe a screen recording captured a private phone call in the background, or you just want a silent loop to play behind a slide.

Whatever the reason, the good news is that macOS already gives you everything you need. You do not have to pay for a third-party editor or upload your footage to a sketchy website. This guide walks through five free, accurate ways to remove audio from video on a Mac — from a two-click trick in iMovie to a single-line terminal command — and then shows you the honest, optional step of shrinking the muted file so it is small enough to share.

Stripping the audio track has real, practical payoffs:

  • Silent background clips for presentations, websites, and video walls that should never blast sound at the viewer.
  • Removing copyrighted music so your clip is not flagged or muted by platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
  • Privacy — getting rid of conversations, names, or location cues that the microphone picked up by accident.
  • Smaller files — an audio track can be a meaningful chunk of a video's size, and dropping it trims the file before you even compress it.

Let's start with the method most people will reach for first.

Method 1: Remove Audio From Video in iMovie (Free, Built-In)

iMovie ships free with every Mac, and it has a dedicated "Detach Audio" feature that makes this the cleanest option for most people. The trick is to detach the audio into its own track and then delete that track.

  1. Open iMovie and create a new movie (or open an existing project).
  2. Click Import Media, then select the video file you want to silence and add it to your library.
  3. Drag the clip from the browser down into the timeline at the bottom of the window.
  4. Click the clip once to select it, then Control-click (right-click) it and choose Detach Audio from the menu. You can also use Modify > Detach Audio or press Option-Command-B.
  5. The audio now appears as a separate green bar attached underneath the video clip. Click that green audio clip to select it.
  6. Press the Delete key (or choose Edit > Delete). The audio is gone; the video clip remains untouched.
  7. Export the silent video with File > Share > File, pick your resolution and quality, and click Next to save.

That's it. The exported file plays with no sound, and the video quality is identical to the original. iMovie is the best choice when you also want to trim, reorder, or add new music later, because the project keeps everything editable.

Method 2: QuickTime Player (Quick, With One Catch)

QuickTime Player is already open on most Macs, and it can remove an audio track in two clicks. The catch is that it only works on file formats QuickTime can edit directly (typically .mov and .mp4), and it does not offer fine-grained timeline control.

  1. Open the video in QuickTime Player (right-click the file > Open With > QuickTime Player).
  2. In the menu bar, choose Edit > Remove Audio. The movie instantly becomes video-only.
  3. Save the result with File > Export As and pick a resolution (for example, 1080p). QuickTime exports a new, silent copy.

The catch and the workaround: older versions of QuickTime, or stubborn file formats, may not show a clean "Remove Audio" option, and QuickTime cannot strip audio from formats it does not natively support (such as .mkv or .avi). If Edit > Remove Audio is greyed out or missing, the simplest workaround is to use one of the other methods below — iMovie for an editing workflow, or VLC and FFmpeg for any format QuickTime refuses to touch. QuickTime is fastest when it works, but it is the least universal of the five.

Method 3: The Photos App (Best for iPhone Footage)

If your clip is already in the Photos app — for example, footage that synced from your iPhone over iCloud — you can mute it without ever leaving the app. Photos does not "delete" the audio track the way iMovie does; instead, it sets the clip's volume to zero, which produces a silent video on export.

  1. Open the Photos app and double-click the video to open it.
  2. Click Edit in the top-right corner.
  3. Look for the speaker / audio icon in the editing toolbar (top-left on most macOS versions). Click it to toggle the audio off — the icon shows a line through it when muted.
  4. Click Done to save your change.
  5. To create a standalone silent file, select the clip and choose File > Export > Export [1] Video, then save it.

Photos is convenient for quick social clips, but because it mutes rather than removes the stream, it is not your best bet when you specifically need the audio track stripped from the container — for that, jump to VLC or FFmpeg.

Method 4: Remove Audio From Video With VLC (Free, Any Format)

VLC is the Swiss Army knife of media players, and it is completely free. Unlike QuickTime, it will happily open and convert almost any format — .mkv, .avi, .webm, you name it — which makes it the go-to when Apple's built-in tools won't cooperate.

  1. Download and install VLC for macOS if you don't have it.
  2. In the menu bar, choose File > Convert / Stream (on some versions it's Media > Convert/Save).
  3. Click Open media and select your video file.
  4. Under Choose Profile, click Customize (or Edit selected profile).
  5. Switch to the Audio codec tab and uncheck the "Audio" box. This tells VLC to leave the audio out of the new file entirely.
  6. Confirm your video codec settings (keeping the same video codec preserves quality), then click Apply / Save.
  7. Choose a destination filename, then click Save / Start. VLC writes a brand-new, audio-free video.

Because this permanently removes the track in the output file, keep your original until you've confirmed the result. There's also a playback-only shortcut — Audio > Audio Track > Disable — but that only mutes VLC's playback and does not change the file, so use the Convert/Save route when you want a real silent copy.

Method 5: Remove Audio With FFmpeg (For Power Users)

If you live in the terminal, this is the fastest and most reliable method of all. FFmpeg strips the audio track in a fraction of a second without re-encoding the video, which means zero quality loss and zero waiting.

Install it once via Homebrew:

brew install ffmpeg

Then run a single command. The -an flag means "no audio," and -c copy copies the video stream as-is rather than re-encoding it:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -an output.mp4

That command finishes almost instantly because nothing is being re-compressed — FFmpeg simply rebuilds the file without the audio stream. It works the same way for any format:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c copy -an output.mov
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c copy -an output.mkv

If you want to batch every .mp4 in a folder, drop this into Terminal from inside that folder:

for f in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c copy -an "muted-$f"; done

FFmpeg is the power-user's choice precisely because it doesn't touch the video at all — the silent output is bit-for-bit identical in picture quality to the source. If you want a deeper dive into what else FFmpeg can do, see our guide on compressing videos with FFmpeg and an easier alternative.

Bonus: Shrink the File After Removing the Audio

Here's an honest note worth your attention. Removing the audio track trims a little off the file size, but the video stream is almost always the heavyweight — so a muted clip can still be far too large to email, drop into Slack, or upload to a portal with a tight size cap.

That's where Compresto fits in. To be clear about what it does: Compresto's job is compression, not audio editing. It does not strip or remove audio tracks for you — you do that with iMovie, QuickTime, VLC, or FFmpeg above. But once your video is silent, Compresto is the cleanest way to make it small.

Compresto is a native macOS app that:

  • Compresses videos (MP4, MOV, and more), images, and PDFs — all offline, so your footage never leaves your Mac.
  • Uses hardware acceleration to compress quickly without melting your CPU.
  • Handles batch and whole-folder jobs, so a stack of muted clips can be shrunk in one drag-and-drop.
  • Is a one-time purchase with a free trial — no subscription, no per-export fees.

The natural workflow: strip the audio with one of the five free methods above, then drag the muted file into Compresto to get it down to a shareable size. If you mostly care about size from the start, our overview of video compression on Mac covers the broader picture. Planning to upload the clip afterward? It's worth knowing whether Google Drive compresses your videos before you do — and if you also need to convert formats without uploading anything, see our CloudConvert alternative for Mac.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the easiest way to remove audio from a video on Mac?

For most people, iMovie is the easiest. Drag the clip into the timeline, Control-click it, choose Detach Audio, delete the green audio bar, and export. It's free, built in, and requires no command line. If you prefer not to open an editor at all, QuickTime Player's Edit > Remove Audio is even quicker — as long as it supports your file format.

Does removing the audio reduce the video's quality?

No. None of these methods re-compress the video stream when used correctly. iMovie, QuickTime, VLC (with the same video codec), and especially FFmpeg (-c copy -an) all leave the picture untouched. The only thing that changes is that the sound is gone.

Can I remove audio from a video for free without downloading anything?

Yes. iMovie, QuickTime Player, and the Photos app all come pre-installed on macOS, so three of the five methods here require zero downloads. VLC and FFmpeg are free to install but are only needed for formats Apple's tools don't handle, like .mkv or .avi.

How do I remove audio from a video on Mac without re-encoding?

Use FFmpeg with the stream-copy flag. The command ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -an output.mp4 removes the audio while copying the video bit-for-bit, so it finishes in seconds with no quality loss. This is the fastest possible method for large files.

Will a muted video automatically be smaller?

A little. Dropping the audio track shaves off whatever the audio stream weighed, but the video stream is usually the bulk of the file. If you need a meaningfully smaller file to share or upload, compress the muted video afterward with a tool like Compresto or the techniques in our best video converter for Mac roundup.

Wrapping Up

You have five reliable, free ways to remove audio from video on your Mac: detach and delete in iMovie, the one-click Remove Audio in QuickTime, muting in Photos, exporting without an audio codec in VLC, and the lightning-fast -an flag in FFmpeg. Pick whichever matches your comfort level and your file format — iMovie and QuickTime for everyday .mp4 and .mov clips, VLC and FFmpeg when you need universal format support or batch processing.

And once the clip is silent, if it's still too big to send, drop it into Compresto to compress it down — offline, on your own Mac, with a free trial and a one-time purchase. Need to keep the sound instead of dropping it? Our companion guide on how to extract audio from a video covers the opposite job.

Ready to compress your files? Join thousands of creators using Compresto ⚡