How To Edit Videos on Your iPhone With the Photos App

Thanks to increased smartphone use and technological improvements, high quality content doesn’t require production studios and expensive equipment — it can all be done on an iPhone.

The iPhone’s built-in Photos app simplifies editing, from trimming and cropping to adjusting color and brightness. If you need help editing videos for TikTok or making YouTube content, learn how to edit video on iPhone with the Photos app.

Can You Edit Videos on an iPhone?

You can do most of your video editing on an iPhone using the Photos or iMovie applications. Each free, pre-uploaded app specializes in specific functions.

iMovie is feature-rich, offering ways to add onscreen text, sound effects, and transitions to your videos. It also has Magic Movie, an AI-powered tool that edits video content to keep the most engaging bits.

While not as comprehensive as iMovie, the Photos app makes it easy to trim footage, adjust brightness and color, and apply filter effects. Its simplicity makes it ideal for quickly creating and sharing short-form content for TikTok or YouTube. Because of this ease of use, we’ll focus on exploring the best way to edit iPhone videos with the Photos app.

How To Edit Videos on an iPhone: 6 Steps

The Photos app contains video editing features that let you:

• Trim, crop, rotate, and flip frames
• Straighten and adjust perspective
• Adjust color and brightness
• Apply filter effects
• Change time, date, and location information
• Apply edits to multiple videos 

Here are six steps for editing videos on your iPhone using the Photos app.

1. Select Your Video and Tap “Edit”

To edit in Photos, open the app and click “Videos.” Choose a video and tap “Edit” to start.

2. Explore the Editing Options

The editing screen in Photos contains four options:

• Video — trim video clips
• Adjust — adjust brightness, color, and sharpness
• Filter — apply color and effects filters
• Crop — crop, straighten, or change perspective

3. Trim Unwanted Clips

To trim in the Photos app, click the “Video” icon to pull up the Timeline. Pay attention to the highlighted yellow box when cutting, as the box’s borders determine where the trimmed video begins and ends.

Tap the arrow on the left and drag the slider to the right to trim clips from the beginning of the video. To trim clips from the end, click the arrow on the right and drag the slider to the left. 

Press the “Play” icon to preview your trimmed video before saving changes. 

4. Crop the Video and Adjust the Perspective

Click the “Crop” icon to remove unwanted elements, change the aspect ratio, straighten footage, or switch between horizontal and vertical perspectives. 

Tap the crop handles in the frame corners and drag them inward to remove footage manually. Keep in mind that this crops the entire video, not just a single clip. Or, you have the option to save what’s between the yellow guidelines as a separate clip.

Alternatively, you can click the “Aspect Ratio” icon in the top right and select a preset aspect ratio to crop your video. Choose whether you want to crop vertically or horizontally, then tap an aspect ratio to preview the cropped version, such as:

• Square
• 16:9 or 9:16
• 10:8 or 8:10
• 7:5 or 5:7
• 4:3 or 3:4
• 5:3 or 3:5
• 3:2 or 2:3

If your footage looks tilted, tap the “Straighten” icon and drag the slider to rotate the video until it appears level. 

Adjusting the perspective can correct distortion, enhance visual impact, and smooth depth changes across clips. Tap the “Vertical Perspective” icon and drag the slider to correct footage where tall images converge toward the top of the screen, and use “Horizontal Perspective” to ensure the video background looks level.

5. Adjust Video Quality

Click the “Adjust” icon in the Photos app to alter your video’s visual qualities. Select an available option and move the slider bar to the left or right to make adjustments. Options include: 

• Auto adjust — automatically adjusts brightness and color based on preconfigured “best” solutions
• Exposure — adjusts brightness or darkness
• Shadows — adjusts the brightness of darker colors
• Brightness — changes the brightness of mid-tones and shadows 
• Black point — adjusts the brightness of deep blacks
• Contrast — adjusts the difference between the brightest and darkest parts
• Vignette — makes the edges brighter or darker
• Highlights — adjusts the brightness of the lightest colors
• Saturation — makes colors more or less vibrant, with -100 saturation resulting in black-and-white video
• Vibrance — adjusts the degree of color saturation or intensity 
• Warmth — makes colors warmer (more yellow hues) or colder (more blue hues) 
• Tint — adds more green or red color 
• Sharpness — makes edges sharper and more defined

6. Enhance With Filters

To add filters to videos in the Photos app, tap the “Filter” icon to preview various options, including:

• Vivid — increases saturation and color contrast
• Vivid warm — more yellow hues than the standard Vivid setting
• Vivid cool — more blue hues than the standard Vivid setting
• Dramatic — makes shadows darker and increases the contrast
• Dramatic warm — more yellow hues than the standard Dramatic setting
• Dramatic cool — more blue hues than the standard Dramatic setting
• Mono — desaturates the video (classic black and white)
• Silvertone — glossier black-and-white exposure with silver highlights
• Noir — high-contrast black-and-white filter

Once you choose a filter, use the slider to adjust the intensity. 

‍How To Edit Videos on Your Phone With Captions

While editing videos with Photos is relatively simple, a much easier and faster way is with Captions, which offers a full range of content editing tools.

Captions’ creative studio lets you quickly edit videos for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram using AI tools. Here’s how to add, trim, and edit a video on your phone in the Captions app:

1. Tap “Create,” and then “Import” to add clips. 
2. Click the + button to add a clip to the beginning or end of your video. 
3. To add a clip in the middle of your project, tap on “Timeline” and select “Split,” then click the icon between the split clips and select “Add.”
4. To delete a clip, tap anywhere on the Timeline, select the clip you want to remove, and click “Delete.”
5. The “AI Trim” tool removes “ahhs” and “umms” from your video — tap “AI Trim,” review each clip identified by the tool, adjust the trim accordingly, and click “Trim” to apply. 

Try Captions for Seamless Video Editing on Your Phone

‍Captions makes iPhone video editing easy. AI-powered tools let you quickly adjust eye contact, add emojis and text to match spoken words, and embed GIFs and images. You can also polish your videos to professional standards by trimming pauses and reducing background noise. 

Try Captions today and discover a better way to edit videos on your iPhone.