Remove background noise from video

We measured it on the same spoken sentence over three kinds of noise. The figures are how much quieter the pauses between words became; the voice stayed within 0.2 dB of its level in every case. Real recordings vary, which is why the page measures yours and shows the result before you download.

Steady sounds go furthest. Key clicks barely change: each click is as short and sharp as a consonant, so the network keeps it in case it is speech. Every 10 dB is roughly half as loud to the ear, so 27 dB quieter is a fan you have to listen for.

• Preview the noisiest part. Move Preview from to where the fan is loudest or you speak quietly, and listen there.
• Watch the voice line. After cleaning, the page says how the voice level changed. If it dropped by more than 3 dB, the cleaner took some of the voice for noise: try Light.
• Clean once. Cleaning a file that was already cleaned, by this page or your recording app, rarely helps and can make the voice sound watery.
• Fix the source next time. A microphone closer to your mouth and further from the computer’s fan does more than any cleaning. The microphone test shows how loud your background noise is before you record.

These are free, apart from DaVinci Resolve Studio:

Audacity (Windows, Mac and Linux)

1. Open the sound in Audacity. For a video, extract its sound first, for example with our audio extractor.
2. Select a second or two where only the noise can be heard, then choose Effect, Noise Removal and Repair, Noise Reduction, and press Get Noise Profile.
3. Select the whole recording, open Noise Reduction again, preview, and press OK.

Free, with fine control over how much is removed. Works best on steady noise; you put the cleaned sound back into the video yourself.

iMovie (Mac)

1. Add the video to a project and select the clip in the timeline.
2. Click the Noise Reduction and Equalizer button above the viewer.
3. Tick Reduce background noise, move the slider, play it back, then share the movie.

Already on most Macs and keeps the video in one piece. Exporting re-encodes the picture.

Clipchamp (Windows)

1. Add the video to the timeline in Clipchamp, which comes with Windows 11.
2. Right-click the clip and detach its audio, then select the audio.
3. In the Audio tab on the right, switch on Noise suppression, then export.

Free and also handles echo. Exporting re-encodes the whole video.

DaVinci Resolve Studio (Windows, Mac and Linux)

1. Put the clip on the timeline.
2. Select it, open the Inspector’s Audio tab and turn on Voice Isolation.
3. Set the amount and render.

Strong on loud and changing noise, but Voice Isolation is in the paid Studio version, not the free one.

This page needs nothing installed, keeps the picture untouched, and does not upload your file.

• It is made for one voice in noise. Other people talking stay in, and music is partly removed, which sounds worse than leaving it.
• Sudden sounds such as key clicks, a door, a dog or a siren are turned down little or not at all. Echo in a bare room is not removed.
• Noise as loud as the voice cannot be separated from it; Strong takes more noise out but leaves the voice thinner.
• Files up to 2.0 GB and 3 hours. The cleaned file is held in memory until you save it, so a phone may run out of memory well before that.
• The sound becomes 48 kHz AAC in an MP4 or M4A, Opus in a WebM, or 16-bit in a WAV. Only the first video and sound tracks are kept; subtitles and chapters are dropped.
• It needs WebCodecs and WebAssembly: current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. Where a browser has no AAC encoder, as in Firefox, the page downloads a small open-source one (about 1 MB) the first time it is needed.

• RNNoise, the noise remover this page runs, was made by Jean-Marc Valin at Xiph.Org. It combines classic signal processing with deep learning: a small neural network decides how much of each of 22 frequency bands is voice, and the model fits in about 85 kB. Source, checked 9 November 2026.
• RNNoise works on mono sound sampled at 48 kHz. Its code is released under a BSD licence. Source, checked 9 November 2026.
• Audacity’s Noise Reduction learns a noise profile from a stretch with only noise in it, then turns that noise down. Its manual says it suits constant sounds and is not suitable for clicks and pops or irregular noise such as traffic or an audience. Source, checked 9 November 2026.
• iMovie on a Mac has a Reduce background noise checkbox under the Noise Reduction and Equalizer button, with a slider from 0% to 100%. Source, checked 9 November 2026.
• Clipchamp’s Noise suppression switch, in the Audio tab, removes background noise, hum and echo from audio on the timeline. For a video, its sound is detached first. Source, checked 9 November 2026.