What Is The Clips App On Iphone

The Clips app on your iPhone is a powerful video-editing app that you can use to easily combine videos, photos, titles, and music into videos to share on social media.
You can take photos and record videos in Clips, with special editing modes and tools available.
You can also add Live Titles, in which the app inserts your narration in the video as on-screen text, alongside other add-ons like emoji, stickers, and music.
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Clips is a deceptively rich and complex video-editing app for iOS.

Clips lets you combine video clips and still images along with filters, title cards, graphics, and audio. While it's designed to let you quickly assemble videos for social media, the app lets you make surprisingly complex video productions.

Here's how to use it.

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How to use the Clips app on your iPhone

To use Clips, you combine videos, photos, titles, and other elements into "projects." To see and edit your existing projects, tap the folder at the top left of the screen. Here you can create a new project or select an existing one for editing.

Tap the folder at the top of the screen to open an existing project or start a new one.

When you start a new project, you can create video from scratch or import a clip from your phone's library. Here are your main options:

Scenes is a selfie mode in which you're recorded on a sort of green screen, where you can choose from a variety of dynamic backgrounds.
Camera lets you record new video or take photos.
Library lets you insert clips from your phone's photo library.
Posters are editable title cards. Choose a style, and you can tap the card to change the text.

The main interface for Clips is where you can record new videos and take photos to include in your project.

How to record photos and videos in Clips

The biggest learning curve in Clips is learning how to add photos and videos to your project, because it works differently than most other video apps.

To record, you can't simply tap the record button — you need to tap and hold it. You'll record video as long as you hold the button. To lock the recording on so you can take your finger away, swipe the record button upwards once recording has begun.

Ordinarily, you simply hold the record button down to record, but you can swipe it up to lock it in recording mode.

You can use your fingers to zoom and pan around the scene as you're recording, adding a "Ken Burns Effect" to your video in real time as you record.

To add a photo to your project, you need to "record" it. This seems counter-intuitive, but is easy to learn:

1. Tap the shutter release button (located directly above the record button) to take a photo, or add one from your library. You'll see the photo on the screen, but it won't be added to the project timeline yet.

2. Tap and hold the video record button to "record" the photo. You can pan and zoom at the same time, to highlight specific parts of the photo.

3. When you're done, release the record button, and the clip of the photo will be added to the project.

How to use advanced features in Clips

There are many other features in Clips. Live titles, for example, turn narration you can dictate (while recording a video or photo) into text that appears on the screen.

You can apply live titles — in a wide variety of styles — to any video, photo, or title card.

You can also apply video styles to your clips, and add text labels, stickers, and emoji as well. And you can tap the music icon in the top-right of the screen to add a soundtrack to your creation.

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How to easily combine videos on your iPhone using the iMovie app
How to add music to a video on your iPhone using the iMovie app, and choose from stock music or your own library
How to import videos from your iPhone onto a Mac wirelessly, in 2 different ways

Dave Johnson

Freelance Writer

Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.