TikTok videos always contain both audio and video in a single MP4 file, but sometimes you just want the audio track — to save music, quotes, or background sounds.
Easy.
If you want to save just the audio, use:
yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/1234567890"Flags explained:
• -x → extract only the audio track • --audio-format mp3 → convert to MP3 (you can also use m4a, opus, or wav)
✅ Result: you’ll get an MP3 file with the video’s sound only.
If you want to keep TikTok’s native audio without re-encoding:
yt-dlp -x --audio-format best "https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/1234567890"This preserves the original AAC or Opus audio track used by TikTok.
To automatically name your files and embed metadata:
yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --add-metadata -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/1234567890"• --add-metadata → embeds the creator and title into the file
• -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" → names the file after the TikTok’s title
If you want both formats, you can chain commands:
yt-dlp "URL" && yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "URL"This saves the full MP4 and the audio-only MP3 version together.
• TikTok doesn’t provide separate audio files or transcripts.
Any captions or lyrics you see in the app are generated dynamically. • yt-dlp uses FFmpeg under the hood to demux and convert the audio. You don’t need to install or call FFmpeg manually — yt-dlp handles it.
You can also extract TikTok audio online without touching the command line:
👉 TikTok Video Downloader — paste any TikTok link, and it’ll generate downloadable video and audio-only files automatically.
Use yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "URL" to pull audio from any TikTok — fast, simple, and watermark-free.