Convert MOV to MP3 on Mac

brew install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i in.mov -vn -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k out.mp3

-vn removes the video track, so the file is only audio. Pick 128k for speech and 192k to 256k for music. Your MOV stays as it was. This also works for iPhone videos, which are MOV files.

For a folder of clips:

for f in *.mov; do ffmpeg -n -i "$f" -vn -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k "${f%.mov}.mp3"; done

No. In QuickTime Player, open the MOV and choose File > Export As > Audio Only. The result is an .m4a file with AAC audio. QuickTime has no MP3 option in any macOS version we know of, and we saw none on macOS 27.0.1.

M4A is fine for iPhone, iTunes, most car stereos and every Apple app. It is not fine for some older players, uploaders and form fields that say “MP3 only”. For those, use ffmpeg. Already have an M4A? The M4A to MP3 guide shows the last step.

AirDrop the video to your Mac, or import it with Image Capture, then use either method above. iPhone clips are MOV files, usually H.264 or HEVC video with AAC audio. The video codec does not matter, because the extraction ignores the picture.

Skip the Photos library if you can. Dragging a clip out of Photos works, but AirDrop gives you the original file with its audio intact. If the clip is huge and you only need the sound, extracting first saves you shrinking the video at all. Need the video smaller instead? See MOV to MP4 on Mac.

We exported audio from one 20 second 1080p MOV (33.0 MB, a generated test clip with a mono sine tone, so only the sizes are meaningful) on an Apple Silicon Mac.

Real iPhone video is far more varied, but the video track almost always dominates the file. The audio is a rounding error. For why, read audio bitrate explained.

Put the start and length before the input. -ss is the start in seconds and -t is how long to keep:

ffmpeg -ss 5 -t 10 -i in.mov -vn -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k clip.mp3

That wrote a 10 second MP3 from the 5 second mark of our test clip. It is the quick way to pull one quote, one song or one voice memo out of a long recording without converting the whole file first.

Check the result before you delete the video. Play the MP3 once, since a wrong start time is easy to miss and the original is the only copy of the full audio. Keep the MOV until you are sure.

Partly. afconvert is built into macOS and reads a MOV directly, but it will not write MP3. It writes M4A and WAV:

afconvert -f mp4f -d aac -b 192000 in.mov out.m4a
afconvert -f WAVE -d LEI16 in.mov out.wav

Always pass -b. Without it our test came out near 51 kbps. MP3 needs ffmpeg or another converter.

Here, Smol is the wrong tool. We checked: it converts video only to MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV, and will not take a MOV and write an MP3. Use ffmpeg or QuickTime.

Smol is useful once you have the audio, or when the video itself is too large: it compresses and converts whole mixed folders from Finder, with nothing uploaded. It costs $29 once, listed on the buy page. For picking a tool, read the best file converter for Mac.