Recording is only half the job. A raw capture from a browser tab usually has dead air at the start and end, inconsistent levels, and sections you didn't mean to include. The SampleGrab waveform editor handles all of this in-place, without leaving the extension popup.
This guide walks through every tool in the editor toolbar, in the order you'd typically use them for a standard editing workflow.
The editor toolbar
The toolbar appears automatically once you stop recording. Each button is described in detail below, in the order of a typical editing workflow.
Step-by-step editing workflow
Hit Play to listen back. The waveform canvas shows a playhead moving through your recording. Click anywhere on the waveform to jump to that position. Use Stop to return to the beginning. This is your review pass — note where the clip actually begins and ends so you know what to trim.
▶ Play · ■ StopClick the ⇔ Select button to enter selection mode, then double-click and drag on the waveform to draw a selection region. The selected area is highlighted. Everything outside the selection can be trimmed away. You can also use a selection to loop just a portion of the clip for review.
⇔ Selection mode → double-click drag on waveformToggle ↻ Loop while a selection is active and playback will cycle continuously between the selection start and end. This is the fastest way to verify that your trim points are in the right place — listen a few times, adjust the selection if needed, then proceed to trim.
↻ Loop · works with or without selectionOnce the selection is exactly where you want it, press ✂ Trim. Everything outside the selection is removed — the clip is now exactly the length of your selection. This is a destructive operation on the in-memory clip, but the original file hasn't been saved yet, so you can always re-record if needed.
✂ Trim — removes audio outside selectionPress ▲ NR to run normalization on the full clip (or on the selection, if one is active). This finds the loudest peak in the audio and scales the entire clip so that peak hits −1 dB — maximizing perceived loudness without clipping. Essential for speech recordings from quiet sources.
▲ NR — normalize · can also be set to auto-run on stop in SettingsHit the download button to export. The file is saved in the format you've selected in the right panel (MP3 or WAV), at the sample rate and bit depth you've configured. If "Save As" is enabled in Settings, a dialog appears letting you choose the destination. Otherwise the file goes to your configured download folder.
↓ Export — MP3 or WAV · format set in right panelChoosing MP3 vs WAV
The format selector in the right panel controls what SampleGrab writes to disk when you export.
| Format | File size | Quality | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| MP3 | ~1 MB/min | Lossy (high quality) | Sharing, podcasts, anything where size matters |
| WAV | ~10 MB/min at 16bit/44.1k | Lossless | Further editing in a DAW, archival, sample libraries |
If you're going to bring the clip into a DAW (Ableton, Logic, Reaper, etc.) for further editing or mixing, always export as WAV. Re-encoding an MP3 into another lossy format compounds the quality loss. WAV gives you a clean, uncompressed starting point for any further processing.
The playback meter
During playback, a vertical meter appears on the right side of the waveform canvas showing real-time L/R levels of the clip as it plays back. This is distinct from the recording meter — it lets you verify the actual output levels of your edited, normalized clip before export.
If the playback meter is consistently hitting the red zone even after normalization, your source material may have been recorded with clipping. In this case, trim the loudest sections or apply a lower normalization target by adjusting the gain knob before your next recording.
Auto-normalize on stop
If you'd rather skip the manual normalization step, open Settings → Auto-normalize on stop. When enabled, SampleGrab runs the normalization pass automatically every time you press Stop — so every clip in your library already has consistent, maximized loudness.
This pairs well with auto-download: enable both and SampleGrab becomes a one-click capture tool — hit record, hit stop, and a normalized, properly-formatted file lands in your downloads folder automatically.
Managing the library
Every recording session adds a clip to the Library panel at the bottom of the extension. Clips are named automatically with their source tab title and timestamp. From the library you can preview, re-export, or delete individual clips. When you're done with a session, use ⬇ ZIP all to bundle every clip into a single archive for easy transfer or backup.
SampleGrab holds audio data in browser memory, not on disk, until you explicitly export a clip. If you close the extension popup or navigate away, clips in the library persist in the extension's background context — but a full browser restart may clear them. Always export important clips before closing the browser.