Remove the Sound From a Video on iPhone
On this page, 7 sections
You’ve got a video clip with wind noise, background chatter, or someone’s terrible commentary, and you just want the picture without the sound. Maybe you’re about to lay music over it instead. You don’t need to download anything. iMovie, which ships free on every iPhone, does this in three taps.
The actual steps
Open iMovie, start a new project, and choose “Movie.” Add your video clip to the timeline. Tap the clip once to select it, you’ll see a row of icons appear above it. Tap the speaker/audio icon. Next to the volume slider that appears, there’s a Mute button, tap it.
A small mute icon shows up in the corner of the clip in the timeline, confirming the audio track is now off for that clip. Export as usual (Share icon, then Save Video) and the exported file has no audio track playing over the picture.
This is a per-clip setting, so if you have multiple clips in the timeline, mute each one you want silent. It doesn’t delete the underlying audio data destructively inside iMovie’s project, you can un-mute the same clip later, but the exported video file itself will have silence for any muted clip.
Muting vs. detaching the audio
Muting just silences the track in place. If you want to actually pull the audio out and keep it as a separate file (say, to use elsewhere), that’s a different action: tap the clip, then “Detach,” which splits the audio onto its own row in the timeline where you can delete it, save it separately, or replace it.
For a straightforward “I just want a silent video,” muting is faster and you can stop there.
Why the volume slider alone isn’t enough
You can also drag the volume slider all the way to zero without hitting Mute. Functionally this ends up close to the same result in the exported file, but the dedicated Mute button is the clean, unambiguous way to do it, and it’s what shows the visual confirmation icon so you’re not guessing whether it actually worked.
If you want music instead of silence
A completely silent video often feels flat once you’re actually watching it back. If the plan is to replace the original sound with music rather than leave it silent, mute the clip first using the steps above, then add a track from Add Media > Audio > Soundtracks or My Music.
We’ve covered the exact steps for that half separately in how to add music to a video on iPhone, which picks up right where this leaves off.
What if you want the audio, not the video
If your actual goal is the reverse, keeping the sound and dropping the picture, that’s a different job entirely, and iMovie’s mute button won’t help you there. Grabio’s Extract Audio action pulls the audio track out of a video file as a standalone M4A, on-device, right from the share sheet.
We cover the full mechanism in how to convert a video to audio on iPhone if that’s actually the task you’re solving for.
A note on file size
Muting a video doesn’t meaningfully shrink the file. Audio tracks are usually a small fraction of a video’s total size compared to the video stream itself, so don’t expect “remove the audio” to double as a compression trick. If file size is the actual problem, that’s a separate fix.
Frequently asked questions
Does muting a clip in iMovie delete the audio permanently?
Not while you’re still inside the iMovie project, you can un-mute it later. Once you export the final video, though, the exported file itself has no audio for that clip, and if you didn’t keep the original source video elsewhere, that audio is gone from the exported copy.
Can I mute just part of a clip, not the whole thing?
Yes. Split the clip at the point where you want the mute to start (tap the clip, drag the playhead, then use the scissors/split action), then mute only the segment you want silent. The rest of the clip keeps its original audio.
Will this work on a video I didn’t record myself, like one someone sent me?
Yes, as long as the video file is in your Photos library or Files app, you can import it into iMovie and mute it the same way, regardless of where it originally came from.
Is there a way to remove audio without opening iMovie at all?
iMovie is the most reliable native route for a clean mute. There isn’t a one-tap system-level “remove audio” action outside of it on iPhone as of the current iOS release.
Does this work in the Photos app’s built-in video editor?
No, the Photos app’s edit tools cover trimming, filters, and basic adjustments, but not muting or removing an audio track. That’s specifically an iMovie (or similar video editor) feature.