How to rotate, straighten, crop, trim, and flip a video on iPhone or iPad

The built-in Apple Photos app on iPhone and iPad lets you edit videos with ease. Follow along as we show you how to rotate, straighten, crop, trim, or flip a video quickly!

Edit video in iPhone Photos app

Edit a video on your iPhone or iPad

  1. Open the Photos app and tap a video clip.
  2. Tap Edit from the top.
  3. Now, hit the crop button.
Edit video in iPhone Photos app

From here, you can rotate, straighten, crop, adjust the aspect ratio, trim, and flip the video (all explained below). After editing, tap the yellow Done button to save your changes. Tip: While editing, use the two-finger pinch gesture to zoom in or out.

Rotate the video

Choose the rotate tool (square with a curved arrow) to rotate the video 90 degrees. Repeat the process until you get the orientation you want.

Straighten the video

Tap the straighten tool (the first icon – circle divided with a line). Straighten the video by sliding the horizontal dial below the tool left or right, which will rotate it counterclockwise or clockwise, respectively. The effect’s intensity ranging from -45 degrees to +45 degrees, is displayed inside the tool’s circular icon. As you move the dial, a grid appears on your photo to help you with alignment.

Besides that, you can also tap the Vertical or Horizontal tools (the second and third icon, respectively), then drag the slider left or right, which makes it easy to adjust the video’s skewed perspective.

Crop the video

To apply quick freeform cropping, simply drag one of the four grid’s corners or edges and let go of the selection rectangle. After a moment or two, your cropped video appears.

Adjust the aspect ratio

The Photos app lets you choose from a range of ratios for cropping, like freeform, square, wallpaper, 9:16, 4:5, 5:7, 3:4, 3:5, and 2:3.

To access all of the built-in aspect ratios, select the crop tool and then tap the rectangle-like icon near the top-right corner of the screen. A horizontally scrollable list of all the aspect ratio presets appears lined up across the bottom of the Photos interface. Now scroll the list left or right with y our finger, then tap a desired value to instantly see the results.

Trim the videos

After tapping Edit, go to the first screen (i.e., don’t tap the crop button). Now, use the sliders on both sides of the timeline below the video, and adjust your start and stop times the way you like by dragging the sliders with your finger. The segment selected for trimming will be tinted yellow on the video timeline.

To preview the video before trimming, simply tap the Play button.

If you’re happy with your video, tap Done to save the changes.

Flip the video

From the crop section, tap the flip tool from the top left. Your video will be instantly flipped horizontally. Note that the iPhone Photos app doesn’t support vertical flipping.

Flip video in iPhone Photos app

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