How to compress videos on iPhone and iPad

Capturing videos with your iPhone or iPad is convenient and easy. However, those video files can be quite large in size. Not only does this take up more space on your device, but can make sending or sharing videos difficult.

Reducing the size of your video files by compressing them is simple with the right tool. And once those files are smaller, you’ll save space on your iPhone or iPad and have an easier time sending them in Mail or Messages or sharing them on social media.

Here’s how to compress videos on iPhone and iPad with an app we created ourselves called Compress Videos. The app is available for free on the iOS App Store.

Compress videos on iPhone

Shrink videos with Compress Videos

1) Pop open Compress Videos and allow it to access your photo library.

2) Tap Select Videos to Compress.

3) Select the video location such as All Videos, Favorites, Recently Added, or any of your albums. The app shows videos that are on your device or in your iCloud Photos library and the file size of each video, which is helpful in identifying the larger ones. Choose one or more videos and then tap the Next button on the top right.

Choose video to compress on iPhone

4) This takes you to the Compression Settings screen, where you can adjust a couple things to reduce the file size of our videos. First, you can adjust the frame rate (fps) down to 24 frames per second. You can, of course, go lower than that to compress the video further, but it can risk lowering the video quality to a point where it’s not really watchable. 24 seems to be the right spot.

Second, you can adjust the video dimensions from 100% (the full size of your video) to something smaller such as the recommended 80%. Unless you watch your videos on a big screen such as a TV, reducing the dimensions to 80% will not have a noticeable impact on the picture quality.

Of course, you can feel free to adjust the compressions settings to your liking. You can play around with the settings and see what works best for you.

5) Now, tap the Compress button at the bottom. You’ll then see the video compressing.

Tweak Compression Settings and hit compress on iPhone

6) The app will reduce the video size and save them to both your library and a newly created album called Compressed videos. On that screen, you can see how much storage space was saved during the process.

At that point, you can choose delete the original videos or keep them on your device.

Video compressed on iPhone

You can then repeat the process to compress another video or just close the app.

Compressing videos on iPhone and iPad can be easy and take just a few minutes when using the right tool. Maybe we are a bit partial, but the Compress Videos app is definitely an app you should try should you want to shrink your iPhone or iPad videos.

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