10 Ways To Start Recording Video With Your iPhone Fast

 Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at how to quickly start recording video on your iPhone.

Now we all walk around with iPhones in our pockets which means that we not only have a camera with us at all times but also a video recorder. Sometimes it's important to be able to get your iPhone out and start recording video as quickly as possible. Maybe something fun and exciting is happening around you and you want to capture the moment. Or maybe it's something much more serious and you want to capture that as well. Different people are going to find different methods easier or harder. It's important you pick one and then practice it and make that your way to quickly start recording video. 

Now you may already be really good at getting your iPhone out and quickly unlocking it. If you're using face ID this could be very fast. But now you've got to get to the Camera App and start recording. So the Camera App icon may not be in a convenient spot on the Home Screen. You can, of course, tap and hold it and drag and put it somewhere where you can more easily reach it. But the easiest place to reach it is usually the very bottom of the screen. You may want to get apps that you don't use as often out of there and replace one of them with the Camera App. Not only does it make it really easy to get to the camera with your thumb after unlocking your iPhone but notice that when you go to other Home Screens the camera stays there because all of the app icons on the Dock are there on every Home Screen. 

So if simply tapping the Camera Icon is your way of quickly getting to the camera you also now need to switch to Video mode. So you can't forget to do that. But there is a way to make that a bit easier. If you go into Settings and then you go to Camera, look for Preserve the Settings. Turn On Camera Mode. What this will do is it will keep the previous setting. So if I switch to Video now and then I go back Home here and I go back into the Camera it will still be in Video mode. So if you think you may be in a situation where you need to record video quickly then you can switch to video mode and know that when you go back to your Camera App the next time it will still be in Video Mode. 

Now another way to get right to Video Mode, whether your Camera App is in the Dock or anywhere else, is you can tap and hold it. This will bring up a Context Menu. You can simply select Video. This will take you into the Camera App where right to Video Mode regardless of where you were before. But then keep in mind you do then have to tap the Red Record Button to start recording. So there's often going to be that other step there, but I'll show you, in a minute, how you might be able to start recording right away. 

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Now, also, if you're on your Lock Screen you can swipe right to left and it takes you right into the Camera App. So, that was just simply a swipe right to left and you get into the Camera App and it resumes which mode you were in as long as you had that preserved setting switch On. There's a setting for that too. If it's not working for you go into Settings and then Camera and then scroll down and look for Lock Screen Swipe To Open Camera. 

Now if you've got a newer iPhone that has an Action Button above the volume buttons you can use that, not just to get to the camera app, but to get right to video recording. So, in Settings you're going to want to go to the Action Button settings. That's only there if you've got an Action button on your iPhone. Then you want to go to the Camera setting here. But notice there is a further option down here. You can select Video. So now the Action Button will work to take you right to Recording Video. You have to press and hold it to prevent accidental presses of the Action Button. But you can see it takes right to video and now I'm just one tap away from starting to record. 

Okay, so what about skipping that step? Being able to go to the Camera App and start recording immediately. Well you can do that with Shortcuts. So you're going to want to go into the Shortcuts App. I'm going to create a very simple shortcut that anybody can make. I'm going to tap the Plus button up here and I'm going to add the Camera Take Video Action. I'm going to set it to the back camera. This right away is an improvement because some of us may have the camera set to be using the Front camera and may have to switch. I want to Reveal More Options here. I want to make sure Quality is set to High and start recording is set to Immediately. So it will start recording right away, as soon as the shortcut is activated. But this shortcut just records. It doesn't Save it anywhere. So what we want to do is we want to look for Save to Photos. Then it will automatically link these two together, Save Video to, and then Recent basically means add it to your Photos Library, don't put it in any specific album. Let's go ahead and name this, Record Now. I'm going to tap the little icon here and then I'm going to choose Camera, and then there is a little like video icon here and I can also tap here and give it a color, like red to make it standout. Now I've got a Shortcut that will start recording video immediately. Let's tap right here again at the top to get a menu and Add to Home Screen. Now we can customize to have a different icon if we want. We'll just keep it what we decided on there. Now we've got an icon here on the Desktop. I can tap that and immediately starts recording. Continues recording there. When I Stop I have to, after stopping, tap Use Video. But that extra action comes after I've recorded. So it is much better than having a step before. It might make sense to replace the camera in the Dock here with that. So now you've got it on all screens and can easily start recording from any of your Home Screens. 

In addition you can go back into the Actions Button here. You've got an Actions Button. One of the options here is Shortcuts. You can choose a Shortcut. We can choose that Record Now shortcut. So now I can use the Action Button and after pressing and holding it, it will jump right into that shortcut which will start recording immediately. Then I can tap Stop when I'm done and Use Video. Now I've recorded the video. So that so far that is probably the best way to do it. But there are other ways to get to that shortcut as well. 

For instance, on the lock screen here notice there's a camera button at the bottom right. That will also take you into the Camera App just by pressing on the icon on the Home Screen or in the Dock. But you can replace that with your shortcut. I'm going to tap and hold on the Lock Screen there and go to Customize. Then I can remove the camera, tap that blank spot there for Plus, and then use Shortcut there and choose that Record Now shortcut. The shortcut is now what is accessed by that button on the Lock Screen. A tap and hold on it and it goes right to recording. 

Now if you don't want to have this Record icon here in the Dock you can always put it as a regular icon but make it so easy to press. I'm going to tap and hold a blank spot here on this Home Screen. I'm going to tap Edit and then Add Widget. I can search for Shortcuts here and add it and I can choose the shortcut. It is going to select Record Now because that was the last one I just created. But I can say Add Widget and it's going to add a widget that will go right to that shortcut. But it's going to be a really big widget. So now I have a way to launch the shortcut with a button I can't miss. 

Now there's another way to have something on the screen to access a shortcut no matter where you are. Even if you are not on a Home Screen, you're in another app. So, go to Settings and then go to Accessibility and then under Accessibility go to Touch. Go to Assistive Touch and turn that On. This will show a dot like this one here. You can drag that around and it will kind of cling to the edges of the screen like this. You can customize what that dot does. Just set it so that when you single tap that or double tap it or long press it, it does something. Like, for instance, let's set the long press to actually launch a shortcut. I've got a lot here but I'll go down to Record Now. So now a long press on that dot will activate that shortcut. So I can tap and hold on it and it will start recording because it is running that shortcut. The great thing about this as opposed to the Dock down below is you can be inside of another app. So, for instance, I'll go into the Clock App here. I can be in Instagram, TikToc, Mail, whatever. I can tap and hold it and it will take me into the shortcut and start recording. 

Now there are lots of other ways to access a shortcut as well. You can use Siri but that's probably not practical in an emergency situation. You can put it in Control Center. If you're used to going to Control Center for lots of things and you're really quick with that. Having a link to that shortcut in there maybe good for you. You could assign a shortcut to a Back Tap, for instance, although it might to be too easy to accidentally trigger that. But maybe the shortcut itself, instead of starting to record immediately could require you to press the Record button and that prevents you from accidentally recording with the Back Tap. 

There's also something else I want to talk about when it comes to using that shortcut. You saw it work perfectly every time I tried it. For the most part it does. But I have run into situations where it didn't start recording even though it was set to start recording immediately, I still had to press the Record Button. I've also had situations where it started recording and then stopped a second later. These bugs are kind of hard to reproduce. But what I would say is if you're using a shortcut to start recording I would keep your eyes on the record button afterwards. Just to make sure it keeps going.

Now if you have a newer iPhone that has Camera Control on the other side from the volume button. It's a little recess button that allows you to quickly access the camera and you can slide your fingers over it to control the camera. You can use this with a simple press to take you into the Camera App. Now, from there if you're in Photo Mode you've got an interesting way to start recording video. You can press and hold the Camera control again. But you have to keep holding it. As long as you're holding it down it's recording video. This is a quick way to record a video but it has the problem where you have to keep your finger pressed on the button else it will stop. But if the Camera App is in video mode, either because you switched to it or it was in video mode previously and has resumed being there, then you can just press on the Camera Control a second time and release and you'll be recording video. 

Now let's talk about some other settings that you should be paying attention to. So inside of the Camera Settings you've got your video recording settings here. So you probably want to set them pretty high. 4K at three frames per second at least, if you think you're going to be recording something important. Just have that setup as your default. So you want to check that if you think you're in a situation where you're going to be recording emergency video. 

You may also want to review your data settings under cellular to make sure it's set to Upload the Video to iCloud even if you're on mobile. I know a lot of people have it set just for doing it on WiFi which is fine and great and saves battery and mobile data in normal situations. But if you're recording important or emergency video you may want it to use your data over 5G to actually save that video to iCloud so it gets up to the Cloud after you're done recording instead of waiting until you get home. 

You can also use an alternative video recording app. Third party free one is Blackmagic Camera. Blackmagic is a hardware company that makes all sorts of video accessories. They have a free camera app that not only allows you to record video but you could actually stream from it to things like YouTube or Twitch. So if you want to stream live you can get this app as an easy way to do it. 

Finally, I've been showing you almost everything here in vertical recording mode. But you shouldn't actually be recording video like that if it's an important event. You should be recording in the horizontal mode. Remember all TV's are still horizontal. Not only that but when recording important events around you you're usually talking about recording people. People enter and leave scenes to the left or right, not from above or below. So recording horizontally will capture a lot more information. 

So after you've selected which one of these techniques you think you want to use to start recording video fast, start practicing it. Just as you're going through your day randomly grab your iPhone and see how fast you can get to recording video. When you do that hold your iPhone horizontally so you're recording horizontal video and are used to doing that as well. I'd love to hear about other techniques people have developed for quickly recording videos with their iPhone. Leave your ideas in the comments below. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.