6/2/20
9:00 am

10 Creative Uses For The Clips App On Your iPhone

The Clips App from Apple is an often-overlooked free creative tool that you can use to build images and videos to share with others. Here are 10 ideas for you to try that use the tools in the Clips app.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at ten useful things that you could do with the Clips app on your iPhone.
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So the Clips app is a free app you can get from Apple for your iPhone. It's a lot of fun to play with but it's also pretty useful. So here's just a sampling of ideas that you could do with the Clips app. First when you go into the Clips app, kind of by default you're here in the Camera and you can record yourself talking with the actual real background behind you. But you could switch over to Scenes and Scenes allows you to talk with a fake background behind you. Now this can be useful sometimes because you can record yourself talking without worrying about the background. 
I'm going to select this background here and now I can record myself talking and record a message for somebody.  Sometimes text just doesn't do it and you want to record a message for somebody or for a group of people and it could be something serious for business use or it could just be something for fun where you thought a personal video of you talking was nice. So now you've got that video there and you could use the Share button to send it. The Share button, of course, is what we're going to use at the end of all of these because that's the whole idea. You create something and you share it. So I've recorded myself talking without worrying what's behind me. I hit the Share button and now I can share it as a message, as an email. I can upload it to various sites, Instagram, Facebook, all that kind of thing.
Okay, so my second idea is not a video at all. It's the opposite. It's just plain text. Let's say you want to post something to social media like a quote or just a brief message but you don't want it to appear as just plain text where it can easily get lost as people scroll through all of their stuff. Well, you can go to Posters and then you can choose from anyone of these backgrounds. There's tons of them and you can scroll through them and select something that's appropriate. Select whatever the background is that you want and then there's text there in the middle. I can select the text and type whatever I want and when I'm done I have this text on the background and I can now go and share it. I see stuff a lot like this on Facebook and Instagram and such and it's so easy to create them in Clips.
Likewise you can use text on a picture you already have. As a matter of fact sometimes it's great to caption a picture before posting it. I go to my Library here and then choose a photo from my Photos Library. So I can choose it like that. I can move it around and recrop it if I wanted to. Then touch the Star and that gives me a bunch of different things I could do to it. I can select text and then select from different types of text. I'll just choose something like that. Type something in. Tap when I'm done and I can even shrink, enlarge, and make the text appear on an angle if I want. Hit the X button and now I have a captioned photo that I can share.
You can also do things with video. Go back to the Library and I can select a video here. Now in order to Share this video I need to re-record it. I tap that big button underneath there and I hold it down. While I'm holding it down the video will play but I can also talk and it will capture my voice in the microphone and blend that with the audio from the video. So I can capture what's going on in the video. So I'll tap and hold and now as I'm talking it's actually recording my voice. I could even move the video. Zoom in, moving around, talking about different things I see in the video. Then when I release when I get at the bottom, you could see there, if I tap that it's actually the video with me talking. Sounds like a narrated video. I can go and Share that out instead of the original video which may not make as much sense unless people read whatever I type with it and a lot to times people don't read it. So it's nice to be able to narrate things.
Now you can also do the same with an image. So you can narrate an image. How do you do that? Well, you select and image and then you start recording and it will record your voice. You can zoom in on different parts of the image, move around as you talk to talk about different things that you see in the image and it will record all those movements as well as your voice. Now I can go and play that back.
Now you can also use this to create a slideshow and I've talked about this before. So I can take this first image and I can record it for a little bit. Now it will record my voice as well. But if you keep quiet instead of just recording the noise in the room it won't record anything. It's listening for your voice and if it doesn't hear it it will just keep it silent. So let me record a few seconds of this. Now I can back to my Library, select another photo and record a few seconds of that. Do the same thing with photo after photo and I can create my slideshow. If I tap down here below I can even see all the different pictures. I can tap and rearrange them. Move them around to change the order. Then when I go and Share them it's going to show a video of all of those from the slideshow.
Now kind of going back to those poster ideas, let's say instead of text you want to share an emoji. Now it's pretty typical to respond with a text message or something online with an emoji. But the character size is always going to be about the same depending upon the platform you are using. Sometimes it would be nice to make the emoji really big or combine it with other emojis. Well you can use the same concept as I showed you before with just text on a background. I can go to Posters here. I can find something like maybe one of these solid color backgrounds at the top. I could select the text and just delete that. Now I'm going to tap the Star and you could see I can add text there as well. I could also add Stickers which are kind of like emoji or emoji itself. So I can choose from all of these. So I can choose something that I like there. I can pitch out to zoom in. I can even rotate it a little bit like that. I can combine it with other pieces of emoji at the same time. Just add as much as I want there. Then I can go and Share this so the person gets a really large emoji maybe even on a nicer background instead of just the regular character emoji.
Let's go back to the ideas of videos. You can use the Clips app to actually trim and merge videos. So let's go back to Library here and I've got a video here. Now in order to include this I need to record it for a little bit. So I'll be quiet so I don't add any additional audio to it. (Recording). Now it's a 22 second video but I only added a few seconds of it. What I'm going to do now is go into that by tapping on it. You can see there's a Trim tool there. I can hit the Trim tool and it will show me the portion I selected. I can actually move the right side of that to include the whole thing. So I didn't have to record for 22 seconds to get all the video. Just 3 seconds was all I needed and now I can stretch this all the way out. But I could also grab the other end and get exactly the portion I want and hit Trim. Now I've got that section in there. I actually find it easier sometimes to use Split. Then you can position this where you want. This works really well especially if there's somebody talking in the video. You can find the spot where you want to cut it. Then you hit Split and now it's two portions here. I can select either portion and then hit Delete to get rid of that.
I can also Merge clips by simply hitting Done and then going to the Library again, grabbing another clip, recording that for a few seconds, and now I've got both clips in there. So I basically merge the two of them and I could go into that second clip and I could select Trim to select a different area of that or use Split as well. I could drag these around to change the order. So I could add a whole bunch of different clips in there and they're merged together. The only problem with this, of course, is Clips does everything square. So you're going to get square output from this. But if you don't mind that it's a really quick way to merge videos together.
Now Clips is also a great way to quickly filter a video. There's a bunch of filters in here. Let's go into the Library first and select a video I want to use. Then before I record it I want to hit the Star and select Filters. There are various different types of filters. You can see kind of a preview at the top of what you get. There's even some video stuff like Camcorder, Aged Film, that kind of thing. So pick something that you like. Let's pick this one right here. Then I'll exit that and now I can record that video. Again, a few seconds is all I need because I can tap on it, then go to Trim and extend the amount. Now when I play it back the entire video is filtered. It's kind of like applying a photo filter but all the way across all the frames of the video. Now when I Share this it has got that filtered effect.
So I saved the best idea for last. This is to use Clips to easily create a video journal or diary. This could be something that you can save for yourself but it also could be something that you share. So to do this just have the camera on like this or you could use Scenes and have, you know, one of these funky backgrounds if you want to do that. Either way you could record a bit and stop. So I could talk a little bit about my day right here and stop. Then I could record a little bit more and talk more about my day and stop. Each time I'm just pressing down and releasing. So I can talk about different things going on and create a story in bits and pieces. If I ever want to go back and delete something I can. I can just tap there in it. Select anyone of these and hit Delete. I can also, of course, Trim and Split as well. I can rearrange if I need.
But I don't just have to do my own videos. Because if I took a picture during the day I can go into the Library and I can select a picture and then I can talk over the picture. Like, here's a picture I like. So now I've got myself talking, I go to a picture, now I can go back to myself talking and do a little bit more like that. When I'm done the entire thing can be shared easily as a video. I can hit the Share button and actually if I'm going to share it to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, I've got those buttons right there. But I could also use Save Video. That will save it out to my Photo Library. If I don't want to do that I can use Save to Files. Save to Files will export this as a video file and I could save it to iCloud Drive. So I could have a folder there of video diaries. I could record these every day. Great to do while undergoing a new experience or traveling. You can record a little diary at the end of each day, show some photos and you could post it for everybody. But you could also just save it as your own video diary to remember the experience by. 
So those are just, kind of like, ten random ideas I came up with by playing around with the Clips app. There's so much more that you can do with it as well. I'm sure you can come up with some great ideas of how to use all those features to quickly make little videos and photos that you can share or keep.

Comments: 26 Responses to “10 Creative Uses For The Clips App On Your iPhone”

Keith Flanagan

5 years ago

Gary,
Thanks for this video. I have had the clips app on my phone for a while but never really knew what I could do with it.

Will

5 years ago

Good stuff and thanks: I look forward to using it.

Bob R

5 years ago

My new SE doesn't have "scenes" as an option. Am I missing something?

Bob R

5 years ago

Little web search reveals "scenes" only on iPhone X. I can live without.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Bob: Probably depends on which cameras you have on your iPhone.

Tom Gonser

5 years ago

Gary — Clips sounds great, but does not show up with App Store search....

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Tom: If you search for "Clips" it should be the first or second result. Here is a direct link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clips/id1212699939

michael dowling

5 years ago

great ideas on this clips app.never used till now!just one question. is it possible to change from square to 16: 9 to fit on my tv.

thanks gary

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Michael: Well, you can. But You'll need to choose whether to crop so it only shows the middle 16:9 box of your 1:1 video, or to show a square in the middle of the 16:9. You would do either just in iMovie.

Ron

5 years ago

Thank you for this one, Gary; it was enlightening and useful both!

Lorenz Rychner

5 years ago

Gary, I realize that my iPhone 5s can't run Clips, but why is it that my iPad Mini 4 running OS 13.4.1 runs Clips without the Scenes feature? It's just not there - only Camera, Library, and Posters sit below the image area. It isn't hiding elswhere, either - no Scenes, period. Any clue?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Lorenz: Probably because your iPad doesn't have the extra TrueDepth camera that the later iPhone models do.

Greg Nelson

5 years ago

Thanks Gary. One question, how do you delete the clips?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Greg: Do you mean the individual parts of something you are building? You can just tap and drag one up and away. If you mean an entire clips project, you can do that when viewing your projects list, selecting a project and tapping the ... button.

Dr Nishith Chandra

5 years ago

Thanks Gary, Immensely helpful I can use clips for my medical profession. Very illustrative.

Susan

5 years ago

Is there a time or space limit with clips

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Susan: Try recording for a while and see if it cuts you off. I'd imagine the limit is how much memory you have. And remember if you plan on uploading to a service, that service may have a length limit too, like Instagram I think is 60 seconds.

Susan

5 years ago

I was trying to share tne clip video it said it was too long 😩so I suppose I should no but it in iMovie didn’t want the extra step. Thank you

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Susan: If the limitation is with the service you are sharing it to, like Instagram, then it doesn't matter where you edit the video.

Susan

5 years ago

I was texting it to myself for fun from ipad to iPhone even though I didn’t need to
No service yet would love to Post it on line privately
Suggestions

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Susan: So in that case the "service" you were using to share the video was iMessage. There is a limit, I think around 3.5 minutes, to the length of videos you can share over iMessage. A much better way to share something from your iPad to your iPhone is to use AirDrop. AirDrop goes right from one device to the other. Sending via iMessage means it uploads it to the Internet from one device and then downloads it to your other device -- so the long way around, in other words.

Susan

5 years ago

Thank you sir drop is not showing up suggestions
Also Vimeo how much room?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Susan: How about just saving it then, but to your iCloud Drive. Then grab it from the iCloud Drive (Files app) on your other device? Vimeo shouldn't have a limit as that is a pro video sharing service, not social media.

Susan

5 years ago

Thank you for your suggestions I’ll keep you posted 🙏

Susan

5 years ago

Can you add multiple songs from
Your library ?
Thank you. That might be a problem posting as well copyright

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Susan: Looks like just one song per clip.

Comments Closed.

10 Creative Uses For The Clips App On Your iPhone

Comments: 26 Responses to “10 Creative Uses For The Clips App On Your iPhone”

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