How to Compress a Video on iPhone

23.02.2024 - 13:43 / howtogeek.com / Ios

Your iPhone can record high-quality videos, but this quality has a drawback: enormous file sizes. Luckily, you can compress videos on your iPhone to free up storage space at the cost of video quality.

Trim With Basic Editing to Reduce File Size

You can edit videos on your iPhone just like you can with pictures. When editing an image, you can tweak aspects like exposure and brightness until you are satisfied with the result. Similarly, you can run some simple edits with videos, trimming the content to reduce its size.

However, the iPhone's built-in editing capabilities are somewhat limited. You can't remove specific segments from the middle of the video; only cut out parts of a video from the start or end. To trim a video on your iPhone, open the Photos app, select the video in question, and tap "Edit" in the top-right corner.

You should see a bar with thumbnails from your video at the bottom. This bar includes a play/pause button, arrows at both ends of the thumbnail sequence, and a vertical seek bar.

Simply slide the vertical bar to pinpoint the exact spot you want to trim. Once you find it, drag the arrow from either the left or right (depending on whether you're trimming the beginning or end of the video) to where you position the vertical bar. After trimming the desired sections, tap Done in the top right corner. Select "Save Video" to overwrite the original or "Save Video as New Clip" to keep the original and save your edited video as a new file.

If you actually want to save space, be sure to hit "Save Video as a New Clip" and then delete the original. Otherwise, your iPhone will hang on to the entire original video in the background, in case you ever want to undo your edit.

Compress With the Shortcuts App

Shortcuts are a quick way to get things done on your iPhone, and a compression shortcut will get your videos and files to the right size with just a few taps. However, Apple doesn't have an in-built video compression shortcut, so you'll need to create one with the iPhone's Shortcuts app. I've gone ahead and done this, so you can download this shortcut or follow these steps to make yours.

First, ensure Shortcuts is installed on your device, then launch Shortcuts. On the home screen, tap the "+" icon in the top-right corner.

At this stage, you'll have to name your shortcut. Tap the dropdown menu next to the New Shortcut label at the top center of your screen and select "Rename" then call it something simple like "Compress Video."

Now, to the geeky part: adding actions to your shortcut. This involves a couple of steps, and if you miss any, your shortcut won't work properly, so be extra careful. Tap the "Add Action" icon and use the search bar to find the "Get Images from Input" action.

N