Best apps to remove filler words from video (2026)
The hard part was never cutting the um. It was finding all forty of them. Every tool here solves the finding; they differ on where you have to be sitting.
Updated
Filler words are a search problem wearing an editing problem’s clothes. On a waveform, “um” looks exactly like the word in front of it, so you end up playing a take at half speed with your ear tuned for a syllable you have already heard thirty times.
Every tool below fixes that the same way — turn the audio into text, because a filler word in text is trivially findable. What separates them is where you have to be to use it, what else comes out in the same pass, and what it costs.
The tools
Descript
Best on a computer
The tool that made transcript-based editing normal. Filler-word removal across a whole episode, multitrack audio, screen recording, collaboration and publishing. If you work at a desk on longer material, the rest of this list is a compromise by comparison.
- Pick it ifYou edit podcasts or long-form video at a computer.
- Not ifYour footage lives on your phone and you want it posted the same day.
Primecutours
Best on iPhone, and for repeated takes
Filler words, silences and repeated takes come out in one pass, and you review the marks as struck-through words rather than hunting them. The repeated-take detection is the part with no direct equivalent elsewhere: say a line three times and only the last delivery survives.
- Pick it ifYou record on a phone, in one long take, and fluff lines.
- Not ifYou need multitrack audio, or you edit at a desk anyway.
CapCut
Best free option
Auto-captions can identify filler words in the transcript, and deleting transcript text removes the matching video. It sits inside a general editor rather than being the app's purpose, so it is a few more taps — but it costs nothing and you probably have it installed.
- Pick it ifYou want this done for free inside the editor you already use.
- Not ifYou do this every week and want it to be the default rather than a menu.
Detail
Best if you also record in it
Silence removal is built into an AI auto-edit that also picks the best moments and assembles shorts. Strongest when the recording happens in Detail too — multicam, teleprompter, livestream and edit in one place.
- Pick it ifYou want the recording studio and the cleanup in one app.
- Not ifYou want the whole take tightened rather than a highlight cut from it.
Riverside
Best if you already record there
A remote recording studio with a text-based editor attached — cut the transcript, the video follows. Makes sense as the editing step for interviews you were already recording in Riverside, less so as a standalone cleanup tool.
- Pick it ifYou record remote interviews and want to trim them where they live.
- Not ifYou are looking for a phone-first tool; editing here expects a desktop.
What to check before you subscribe
- Can you veto individual cuts? A tool that removes every filler without review will eventually cut a pause you meant.
- Does it cut on word boundaries? Waveform-gap cutting is what makes edited audio sound stitched.
- Does silence removal come with it? Dead air usually costs more seconds than the fillers do.
- How is processing metered? Some tools charge by minutes of media, some by monthly credits; the difference shows up on a long recording.
Questions
Can I remove filler words without an AI tool?
Yes, and it is worth knowing the manual cost so you can judge whether a subscription pays for itself. In any conventional editor you scrub the waveform, find the 'um' by ear, split the clip twice and delete the middle — roughly ten to fifteen seconds each. A three-minute talking take routinely holds thirty to forty of them. That is the arithmetic these tools are competing against.
Does removing every filler word sound unnatural?
It can. Deliberate pauses carry meaning, and 'like' is sometimes a real word. The tools that work well cut on word boundaries from a transcript rather than on waveform gaps, and let you restore an individual cut. Whatever you use, skim the proposed cuts rather than accepting them wholesale.
What about silences and repeated takes?
Silence removal is the common companion feature — most tools here do both in one pass. Repeated takes are rarer: detecting that you delivered the same sentence three times and keeping the last is a distinct problem, and few tools treat it as a first-class pass.
Are there desktop tools that only do this?
Yes — silence- and filler-removal specialists exist for people who edit on a computer and want to keep their existing NLE, working as plugins or preprocessors rather than as editors. They are worth searching out if a desktop timeline is where your project already lives.