Online voice recorder

Reduce background noise listens to the quietest moments of your recording, when you were not speaking, and treats that sound as the room. It then splits the recording into thousands of short slices and turns each frequency down when it is no louder than the room. Your voice stands above the noise, so it is left alone. A floor of about 18 dB stops the room from vanishing completely, because total silence between words sounds worse than a quiet room.

It works on sound that stays the same: a fan, an air conditioner, computer hum or hiss. It cannot remove sounds that come and go, such as a door, a dog, a keyboard or other people talking, and anything as loud as your voice stays. Leave a second of silence at the start of a recording to give it a clean sample of the room. The result tells you how many decibels it took off, and the original is kept, so you can switch it off again.

• Get close. A hand’s width to a forearm from your mouth. Distance is what makes a recording sound like a room instead of a voice, and no setting fixes it afterwards.
• Pick a soft room. Curtains, carpet and clothes soak up echo. A wardrobe full of coats works well.
• Turn off what hums. Fans, air conditioning and a nearby fridge are louder on a recording than they seem in the room.
• Speak across the microphone. Pointing it just past the corner of your mouth keeps the pops from P and B sounds out.
• Know what you will say. The script timer tells you how long a script will run, and the online teleprompter scrolls it for you.

To check your level, background noise and permissions before you start, use themicrophone test. To narrate over your screen, the guide torecording a screen with your voice on a Mac covers the setup. Already have a video and only want its sound? Extract the audio instead. To film yourself as well, use the webcam recorder.

Most computers and phones can already record sound. These are free:

Voice Memos (Mac)

1. Open Voice Memos and click the Record button.
2. Click Pause to take a break, then Done to save.
3. Select the recording to play, rename or trim it.

A good choice if you already work on a Mac and only need a quick memo.

Sound Recorder (Windows)

1. Search the Start menu for Sound Recorder and open it.
2. Press Start recording, or Ctrl+R.
3. Press Stop. The file is saved for you and listed in the app.

Records for much longer than this page can.

Voice Memos or Recorder (iPhone and Android)

1. Open Voice Memos on an iPhone, or your phone’s recorder app on Android.
2. Press record, hold the phone a hand’s width from your mouth, and press stop.
3. Use the share button to send the file to yourself.

A phone’s microphone is often better than a laptop’s.

Audacity (Windows, Mac and Linux)

1. Install Audacity and choose your microphone in the toolbar.
2. Press Record, then Stop.
3. Edit the recording, then use File → Export Audio to save it.

Free and far more capable, and the better choice for long recordings or several tracks. It takes longer to learn.

This page needs nothing installed, works the same on any computer, and always gives you a choice of MP3, M4A or WAV in your downloads.

• Recordings are up to 30 minutes and are held in memory until you download them. Closing or reloading the tab loses an unsaved recording; the page warns you first.
• One voice track, in mono. There is no pause, no multitrack and no cutting from the middle of a recording, only the start and end; the audio trimmer can cut out the middle of a saved file.
• MP3 and M4A are 128 kbps at 48 kHz. Audiobook publishers such as ACX ask for 192 kbps at 44.1 kHz, so finish those files in an audio editor.
• It records your microphone, not the sound your computer is playing.
• Noise reduction handles steady noise only, and on a long recording it takes several seconds.
• Tested in Chrome on a Mac and with Safari’s browser engine. Edge, Firefox and real phones have not been tested on this page yet. A phone can stop recording when you switch apps or the screen locks. Some apps’ built-in browsers block the microphone; open the page in your browser instead.

• A page can set the bitrate of a browser recording; left unset, the audio bitrate depends on the browser, the sample rate and the channels. This page asks for 128 kbps, so the quality is the same each time. Source, checked 7 November 2026.
• The Opus standard’s recommended range for full-bandwidth speech is 28 to 40 kbps, well under the 128 kbps this page records at. Source, checked 7 November 2026.
• ACX, which publishes audiobooks to Audible, asks for MP3s at 192 kbps or higher, constant bitrate, at 44.1 kHz, with a noise floor no higher than -60 dB RMS. Source, checked 7 November 2026.
• Voice Memos on a Mac records with one click on Record, can pause and resume, and can trim a saved recording. Source, checked 7 November 2026.
• Sound Recorder on Windows records for up to three hours in one file, and starts with the Start recording button or Ctrl+R. Source, checked 7 November 2026.