Does this only trim silence from the start and end?

No — it strips silent gaps throughout the entire recording, not just the leading and trailing edges. That's the difference between this and a trimmer: you don't have to find the gaps yourself.

What do threshold and minimum gap length control?

Threshold sets how quiet something has to be to count as silence, in decibels. Minimum gap length sets how long that quiet stretch has to last before it gets cut. A stretch has to satisfy both at once, which is why a brief pause between words survives while a two-second gap doesn't.

What threshold should I use?

Start with the -30dB default. If gaps are being left behind, your room tone is louder than the threshold — try -20dB. If natural pauses are being cut, go the other way toward -40dB. Room tone varies enough between recordings that there's no single correct value.

Is there a size or length limit?

Up to 80MB per file, and up to 1 hour of audio — enough for a full podcast episode or lecture recording. There's no paid tier that raises either one.

Will the output be shorter than the original?

Yes — gaps are cut out entirely rather than muted, so the result is shorter than the input. How much shorter depends on how much dead air was in the recording.

Does removing silence affect audio quality?

The audio that remains is untouched — only the silent sections are removed, and the format and quality of everything else is preserved.

How is this different from the Silence Splitter?

Both find the same silent gaps. The Silence Remover deletes them and gives you one shorter file. The Silence Splitter uses them as cut points and gives you separate files — one per section. Use the remover to tighten a recording, the splitter to break one long recording into tracks.

Are my uploaded files kept?

Your upload is deleted as soon as processing finishes — not on a timer, and whether the job succeeded or failed. The processed file is available to download for 1 hour, then removed automatically. There are no accounts, so nothing is linked to you.

Yes — no sign-up, no email, no account, and no watermark on the output. The size and length limits above exist so one person can't tie up the servers, and there's no paid tier that removes them.

Free Silence Remover

Cut dead air throughout a recording, not just the start and end, free, no sign-up, no watermark.

Silence remover

-30 dB · 0.5s+

File
Run
Result

Both settings have sensible defaults — they work well for most podcast and voice-memo cleanup without any adjustment. Upload a file to preview exactly what would be cut.

Silence threshold-30 dB

-90 · AggressiveDefault (-30)-10 · Conservative

Minimum gap lengthMinimum gaps

0.1s — cuts short pausesDefault (0.5s)10s — only long dead air

Whole-file cleanup

Cuts gaps everywhere, not just the ends.

One-click ready

Sensible defaults, no tuning required.

No sign-up

No account, no email, no watermark. Up to 80MB and 1 hour.

How to remove silence from audio

Upload an AAC, AIFF, FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG, or WAV file.
Leave threshold and minimum gap length at their defaults, or adjust them.
Download the result — shorter than the original, with dead air cut throughout.

AACAIFFFLACM4AMP3OGGWAV

How silence detection works

The tool scans the recording for stretches that fall below your chosen loudness threshold. Once a quiet stretch lasts longer than the minimum gap length you've set, it's cut out entirely and the audio on either side is joined back together. Anything quieter than the threshold but shorter than the minimum gap — a brief pause between words, for instance — is left alone, since it doesn't meet both conditions at once.

That "both conditions" part is what makes the two settings work as a pair rather than independently, and it's why changing one often has no effect until you change the other too.

Silence Remover vs. Splitter vs. Trimmer

Three tools that all cut audio, easy to pick the wrong one. The short version: the remover shortens one file, the splitter turns one file into several, and the trimmer keeps a section you choose yourself.

Comparison	Silence Remover	Silence Splitter	Audio Trimmer
What it does	Deletes silent gaps	Cuts at silent gaps	Keeps one section
You get back	One shorter file	Several files	One clip
Best for	Tightening a podcast or voice memo	Splitting a long recording into tracks	Extracting a specific quote or clip
Manual work	None — automatic	None — automatic	You pick start and end

Splitting one long recording into separate tracks instead? Silence Splitter uses the same detection to cut rather than delete. Keeping just one section? Audio Trimmer is the better fit.

Choosing a threshold

The defaults — -30dB threshold, 0.5 second minimum gap — handle most podcast and voice-memo cleanup without adjustment. When they don't, the symptom tells you which way to move:

What you're seeing	What to change
Gaps left behind, barely shorter	Raise the threshold toward -20dB — your room tone is louder than the current setting
Natural pauses cut, speech sounds rushed	Lower toward -40dB, or lengthen the minimum gap
Long gaps handled, short ones remain	Shorten the minimum gap below 0.5s
Result feels choppy between sentences	Lengthen the minimum gap past 1s

There's no correct preset for a given content type — it depends on how quiet your room tone is and how tightly you want the result edited. Preview and adjust rather than assuming one setting fits every recording.

Doing this in Audacity instead

Audacity has a Truncate Silence effect that does the same job, with more control: it can shorten gaps to a set length rather than removing them outright, and you can undo, audition and re-run it on a selection while watching the waveform. If you're already editing in Audacity, or you need gaps shortened rather than deleted, that's the better tool.

It also has no length limit, which makes it the right answer for a recording longer than 1 hour.

This page exists for the other case: you have one file, you want the dead air gone, and installing a desktop editor to do it once isn't worth it. Upload, download, done — nothing to learn and nothing to install.

When this is worth doing

Anywhere a recording has more quiet in it than a listener will sit through. In practice that's three situations:

Spoken-word editing: Podcasts, interviews and voice-overs, where scattered pauses add up to minutes across an episode and scrubbing for them by hand is the slowest part of the edit.
Long-form recordings: Lectures, audiobook chapters and meeting recordings with long quiet stretches between sections.
Before further processing: Less audio means less to transcribe, upload or store.

On that last point: cutting dead air first means less audio for Audio to Text to work through. If background noise rather than silence is the problem, the Noise Remover or, for speech specifically, the Voice Cleanerhandle that instead — silence detection won't touch a continuous hiss, because it never falls below the threshold.

Want the full breakdown of how these two settings interact, and why cutting too aggressively can clip natural pauses? Read Cutting Dead Air from Podcasts & Recordings.

Free Silence Remover

How to remove silence from audio

How silence detection works

Silence Remover vs. Splitter vs. Trimmer

Choosing a threshold

Doing this in Audacity instead

When this is worth doing

More free tools

Silence Splitter

Voice Cleaner

Noise Remover

Trim Audio

Audio to Text

Frequently asked questions