M4A to MP3

Drop an .m4a file here and get an MP3 back in a few seconds. M4A to MP3 conversion runs entirely in this browser tab: the audio is decoded and re-encoded on your own device, so voice memos, interviews and music never leave it.

How it works

  1. 1.Add your M4A files

    Drag them onto the box above or click to pick them. iPhone voice memos, iTunes downloads and other .m4a files all work.

  2. 2.Choose a bitrate

    192 kbps is the default and suits most music; 128 kbps is plenty for speech. You can still change it on any single file.

  3. 3.Convert M4A to MP3

    Press Convert. The first file waits a moment while the encoder loads, then each file shows its own progress.

  4. 4.Download

    Save the MP3s one by one or as a single ZIP. Each one keeps the name of the M4A it came from.

Settings you can change

  • Bitrate: 128, 192, 256 or 320 kbps for the whole batch, or a different one on any row.
  • Tags already in the M4A, such as title and artist, are copied to the MP3. You can also set artist, album and year for every file; the title then comes from each file name.
  • Match loudness across files, and trim with start and stop times in seconds or mm:ss.
  • “Download after conversion” saves each MP3 automatically as soon as it is ready.

About M4A files

M4A is an MPEG-4 file that holds audio only. Inside there is usually AAC; some files use Apple Lossless (ALAC) instead. Both convert the same way here.

The iPhone Voice Memos app saves recordings as .m4a, which is why so many of them land on computers and in upload forms that want an MP3.

AAC generally sounds at least as good as MP3 at the same bitrate, so the reason to convert is compatibility: older MP3 players, some car stereos, and sites or apps that only take MP3.

Both formats are lossy, so converting is a second round of compression. Use 192 kbps or more for music to keep the extra loss hard to hear, and hold on to the original M4A. Copy-protected tracks from the old iTunes Store use the .m4p extension and can't be converted.

Privacy and file limits

The converter is a WebAssembly build of FFmpeg running in a background worker in your tab. Your M4A files are read from disk by the browser and never sent to a server; the only download is the engine itself, once, on the first conversion.

On a computer you can add up to 15 M4A files at once, 200 MB each and 500 MB in total. Phones get 50 MB per file and 120 MB per batch, because a mobile tab has far less memory to work with.

Related converters

Need uncompressed audio for an editor instead? Use the M4A to WAV converter. Raw .aac files from recorders go through AAC to MP3, and if the MP3s come out bigger than you'd like, you can compress the MP3 files to a lower bitrate.