Voice Recorder
A voice recorder with a real pause: hold the take, breathe, carry on into the same file. Live input meter, a mic picker when you have more than one, and M4A, WAV, Opus or FLAC out.
Runs entirely in your browser — your files and text never leave your device.
Applies from your next recording.
Speak to check your microphone is picked up — the bar moves with your input.
M4A (AAC) and Opus are compact and play everywhere; WAV is uncompressed and FLAC is compressed lossless — both larger, best for editing.
How to use
- Start recording, allow the microphone, and check the Input level bar reacts to your voice before you say anything you care about. Pause and Resume hold the take mid-flow, and Stop ends it.
- Play the result back, choose M4A, WAV, Opus or FLAC, then hit Download. The file lands as recording plus that extension.
About this tool
Press Start recording, say yes to the microphone prompt, and then watch the Input level bar. If it doesn't move while you talk, whatever you record is going to be silence, and you would much rather learn that now than after ten minutes of narration.
That bar is a peak meter, not decoration. Barely twitching means you're too far from the mic or the system input is turned down. Pinned at the right end means clipping, which sounds like a crunch on every loud consonant and can't be undone later. Somewhere around two thirds of the way across is a good place to sit.
Pause is a real pause. It holds the recording and freezes the clock at once, the button becomes a play arrow, and pressing it again carries straight on into the same file. A cough, or a sentence you want to start again: neither one costs you the take or leaves you gluing two files together afterwards.
When your machine can see more than one input, a Microphone dropdown appears above the meter. Laptop mic, headset, USB interface, whichever you want. The choice applies from the next recording rather than the one already rolling, and there's a note under the field saying exactly that.
Stop, and the take shows up in a player so you can listen before deciding anything. Then pick a format. M4A or Opus if it's going to a phone or a chat app, WAV or FLAC if it's headed into an editor. Download saves it as recording.m4a, recording.wav, and so on. The take only lives in the tab, so save it before you close the page.
Good to know
- The take lives in the tab and nowhere else. Reload or close the page and it's gone, so download before you do either. Moving to another tool on the site stops a recording that's still running, though it keeps what you had captured up to that point.
- Your browser captures in its own compressed codec first, and the download re-encodes from that. Picking WAV or FLAC stores the capture losslessly, but it can't put back detail the capture already threw away. A long session also piles up in memory until you save, which an old phone notices well before a laptop does.
Things people ask
Can I pause halfway through and pick up where I left off?
That's what Pause is for. The recording and the timer both stop, the button becomes a play arrow, and pressing it drops you back into the same file. A take with three breaks in it still downloads as one continuous recording.
How do I record from my headset instead of the laptop mic?
Grant access once, and if the browser can see two or more inputs a Microphone dropdown appears above the level meter. Choose the headset there. It applies to your next recording, so stop the current one first if you're already rolling.
Is there a time limit on a single take?
None is enforced. The clock will run past an hour quite happily. What eventually bites is memory, since the whole recording is held in the tab until you save it, so a marathon session on an old phone can start to drag.
Why did my recording come out so quiet?
Usually the system input level rather than the tool. Raise it in your sound settings, move a hand's width closer to the mic, and watch the meter as you talk. If the take is already made and can't be redone, the Audio Normalizer will lift it.
Nothing happens when I press record. What now?
Look for a blocked microphone icon in the address bar, since a denied permission is the usual cause and the tool says so in red when it happens. After that, check the right device is picked in your system settings and that no call app is holding the mic open.
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