Current chatter detection methods using variational mode decomposition (VMD) hardly select appropriate intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) for characterizing chatter in micro milling. This article introduces a novel variational mode extraction (VME) method to isolate a single IMF representing chatter. An adaptive filter removes chatter-independent components, enabling VME to identify the desired IMF with adaptive calculations for center frequency and penalty factor. The Hilbert-Huang transform is then applied to obtain the time-frequency distribution of the IMF, and various features are computed. Finally, two methods are employed: streaming feature selection considers feature interaction, and radial basis function support vector machine selects pertinent features to establish the chatter detection model. Extensive micro milling tests validate the method, achieving an average detection accuracy of 99.25%.