How to remove audio from a video on iPhone, or just the music

To remove the audio from a video on iPhone, open it in Photos, tap Edit, tap the speaker icon, and tap Done. That’s it, no app needed, and you can undo it later.

If what you actually want is to get rid of the background music and keep people’s voices, muting won’t do it. That part is further down.

Mute a video in the Photos app

1. Open the video. Open Photos and tap the video you want to silence.
2. Tap Edit. Tap Edit to open the video editor.
3. Turn the sound off. Tap the speaker icon at the top left of the editor. It changes to a speaker with a line through it, which means the video has no sound.
4. Save. Tap Done (the checkmark at the top right). Shared copies of the video are now silent.

The speaker icon sits at the top of the video editor. When the sound is off it shows a line through it. The video still plays in your library, just silently, and any copy you share, AirDrop or upload is silent too.

Get the sound back

Muting is not destructive on your own phone. Open the video, tap Edit, then tap Revert and confirm. (Tapping the More button, then Revert to Original, does the same.) Photos goes back to the original with its sound.

If you want both versions, duplicate the video first (tap the More button, then Duplicate) and mute the copy.

Mute part of a video

Photos can’t silence a section, only the whole clip. For that, use iMovie, which is free from Apple: add the video to a new movie, split the clip where the silent part starts and ends, select the middle piece, tap the Audio button, then tap Mute.

Remove only the music and keep the voices

Often, though, the real goal is different. You filmed a toast, a lesson or a street interview, and there’s a song playing underneath. You want the song gone, not the people.

For most videos, Photos and iMovie can’t do it. (The exception: if you recorded the clip yourself with Spatial Audio on iPhone 16 or later, try Edit, then Audio Mix, which can turn down background sound.) Turning the volume down lowers the voices with the music, because in a recorded video they are one soundtrack. Getting the music out takes a separation model that splits the audio into speech, music and everything else, then rebuilds the soundtrack without the music. I explain why the usual tricks fail in how to remove background music from a video .

I make MusicWipe, which does this. On iPhone it runs in Safari, with nothing to install:

1. Open app.musicwipe.com in Safari and choose the video from your library.
2. Listen to the free 30-second preview with the music removed. Hold to hear the original.
3. If it sounds right, sign in to clean the whole video (3 free minutes the first time, with a small watermark on the export) and save it. Safari puts it in Downloads in the Files app. To move it to Photos, open it in Files, tap Share, then Save Video.

The preview needs no account. Signing in with Apple or Google adds 3 free minutes for full videos, once. Exports made on them carry a small MusicWipe watermark. Very long videos can be too big for what Safari lets a web page hold. Our rough estimate is that past 10 to 15 minutes you should use a computer.

Separation isn’t perfect. Listen to the loudest part of the song with headphones before you post, and if a trace survives, move the Ambience slider toward Voice only. Steady, rhythmic sounds like chopping can be mistaken for music.

Which one do you need?

• No sound at all (a silent clip for a slideshow, or to add your own music): mute it in Photos.
• Silence just one part: split the clip in iMovie and mute that piece.
• Keep the voices, lose the song: separate the soundtrack with a tool like MusicWipe.