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Why your browser can't open a WMA file.

WMA is Windows Media Audio, Microsoft's format from the early 2000s. No web browser can decode it, so nothing that runs in your browser can convert it. Here is what to do instead.

BY MORPH3 MIN READUPDATED SEPTEMBER 2026

What a browser can play

Every web browser ships its own audio decoders, and they cover the web's formats: MP3, AAC and M4A, Opus and Vorbis in Ogg, FLAC and WAV. WMA was never one of them. Its codecs are Microsoft's, and no browser added them.

So when a web page offers to convert a WMA file, one of two things is true: the file is being sent to a server that does the work, or the page cannot actually do it.

Why Morph can't convert it for you

Morph converts on your device. The file is read and written again inside your browser tab, and it is never uploaded. That promise has an edge: a format your browser cannot decode is a format Morph cannot read.

We would rather tell you than take your file somewhere else. When you place a .wma file on Morph, it says so straight away, before you wait for anything.

The sound track of a WMV video is WMA too, so the same is true of taking the audio out of a WMV.

What to do

Step 1 Open the file in a desktop media player that plays WMA. The one built into Windows does.
Step 2 Save or export it from there as MP3, WAV or FLAC.
Step 3 Place the new file on Morph's converter. From there it becomes any format Morph writes, on your device, without uploading.

Two more ways back. If the WMA came from a CD you still have, rip the CD again as FLAC or MP3. If a device recorded it, such as an old voice recorder, its desktop software can usually export MP3 or WAV.

Open the converter

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