The Shortcuts route: “Encode Media” with audio only
Apple's Shortcuts app can pull audio out of a video with one action. It is genuinely good, and there are two things about it nobody mentions.
Free on iPhone and iPad, for the videos already in your camera roll. Works offline; one free conversion, then a subscription.
Apple's Shortcuts app really can pull the audio out of a video, for free, with no third-party anything. It is worth knowing how — and worth knowing the two things about it that every tutorial leaves out.
Building the shortcut
- Open Shortcuts → + (top right) to start a new one.
- Add Action → search for Select Photos. This is the picker that opens your camera roll. If your videos live in Files instead, use Get File.
- Add Encode Media. It appears under Media, and by default it re-encodes video.
- Tap the small arrow on the Encode Media action to expand its options, and turn on Audio Only. The action's title changes to "Encode … to Audio".
- Add Save File. Turn on Ask Where to Save if you want to choose a folder each time.
- Give it a name — "Video to Audio" is the obvious one — and you are done.
Run it, pick a video, and a few seconds later you have an audio file in Files. If you add the shortcut to the share sheet (in its settings, turn on Show in Share Sheet and allow Media as input), you can start it from Photos directly: share the video, scroll to your shortcut, tap.
The first thing nobody mentions: you get an M4A
Encode Media with Audio Only writes an .m4a file. There is no MP3 option in Shortcuts, no hidden setting, and no way to change it. Most articles titled "convert video to MP3 on iPhone with Shortcuts" quietly end with an M4A and hope you do not notice.
Whether that matters depends entirely on where the file is going. M4A plays on every iPhone, Mac, Android phone, Windows 10 and 11 machine and modern browser. It is only old hardware — a 2008 car stereo, a dictation recorder, an upload form that filters by extension — that insists on MP3. If you need MP3, you need something other than Shortcuts: this site's extractor or an app.
The second thing: it is better quality than you think
Here is the pleasant surprise. Because an iPhone video already carries AAC audio, and because .m4a is the container AAC belongs in, the Shortcut's output is essentially the original audio in a new wrapper. You are not losing a generation. Anyone who converts that M4A to MP3 afterwards "for quality" is doing the opposite of what they intend.
That is the same reason this site defaults to offering M4A as the untouched option: it is not a compromise, it is the best available answer for anything filmed on a phone.
When the shortcut fails
"Encode Media failed" with no detail is the common one. Three causes, in order of likelihood:
- The video is an iCloud placeholder. If Optimise iPhone Storage is on, the full file may not be on the device. Open the video in Photos, let it download, then run the shortcut again.
- The video has no audio track. Encode Media cannot make one. A silent screen recording is the usual culprit.
- The video is very long or very large. Shortcuts runs with a memory budget and a watchdog; a 4K recording of an hour-long event can exceed both.
The shortcut produces a video, not audio. The Audio Only switch is off, or you edited a copy of the shortcut where it was never on. It lives behind the expand arrow on the Encode Media action, which is easy to miss entirely.
Shortcut, website or app
| Shortcuts | This website | The app | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free, no limit | One free conversion, then a subscription |
| Formats out | M4A only | MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG, .opus | MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV |
| Works offline | Yes | Yes, once the page has loaded | Yes |
| Reads the camera roll directly | Yes | Save to Files first | Yes |
| Setup | Five minutes, once | None | Install |
| Several videos at once | With a Repeat action | Yes, a queue | No, one at a time |
Doing a batch with Shortcuts
If you do want several at once, wrap the actions in a loop: Select Photos (turn on Select Multiple) → Repeat with Each → inside the loop, Encode Media (Audio Only) on the Repeat Item, then Save File. It is slower than it looks — each video is encoded in turn — but it runs unattended, which is the point.
The equivalent here is simply adding several videos to the extractor at once; each one is processed in turn and gets its own download.
Turning the result into a ringtone
A common follow-up. On iOS 26 you no longer need a computer: download or produce the audio, open Files, long-press the file, Share, then Use as Ringtone. The limit on that route is 30 seconds, so trim it first — which the Shortcut cannot do, and the ringtone page here can.
The app does the same job in two taps, with MP3 as an option and no shortcut to maintain.