To edit a video on iPhone, start in the Photos app that came with it. Photos trims the start and end, crops, adjusts light and color and adds filters. It cannot remove a section from the middle of a clip, add captions or combine clips. For those you need a second app, and which one depends on what you are making. This guide walks through the built-in tools first, then shows where iMovie and an auto-editor like Wavcut take over.
How do I trim a video on iPhone?
Trimming in Photos changes where a video starts and stops. Apple documents it in five steps:
- Open the Photos app and tap the video.
- Tap the Edit button.
- Drag either end of the frame viewer below the video to the new start and stop points.
- Tap Done.
- Tap Save Video to keep only the trimmed version, or Save Video as New Clip to keep the original as well.
Pick Save Video as New Clip when you might want the full take later. Apple notes that a video saved as a new clip cannot be reverted to the original, while a plain Save Video can: open it, tap Edit, then Revert.
How do I cut a video on iPhone if the part I want to remove is in the middle?
This is the question Photos cannot answer. Its trim handles only move the start and the end, so a stumble or a long pause in the middle stays in. You have two options.
Split it in iMovie. Apple's free iMovie app splits clips. Add the video to a project, scroll so the playhead (the white line) sits where the unwanted part begins, tap the clip, tap the actions button, then tap Split. Do the same where the unwanted part ends, then delete the piece in between. You can also split by tapping the clip and swiping down over the playhead. Pinch open on the timeline first if you need a precise cut.
Let an editor find the cuts. When the parts you want gone are pauses and dead air, which is most of what a talking-head take needs removed, an editor that detects silence does the splitting for you. Wavcut runs that detection on the iPhone itself and marks every cut on the timeline, so you can tap any one to put the moment back. Our guide to removing silence on iPhone covers how to keep the result from sounding choppy.
What else can the Photos app edit?
More than most people use. In the same Edit screen you can:
- Adjust light and color (Exposure, Brilliance, Highlights and more), or tap the auto-enhance button.
- Add a filter such as Vivid or Dramatic. On iPhone 16 and later, Apple steers you to Photographic Styles instead.
- Crop, rotate, flip or straighten, including a 9:16 preset that fits Reels, Shorts and TikTok.
- Change playback speed on videos captured at a high frame rate, and move the slow-motion section of a Slo-mo video.
- Copy and paste edits from one video to others, so a color fix you like can go onto a whole batch.
- Audio Mix on videos recorded with Spatial Audio on iPhone 16 or later: Studio reduces background sound and reverb, In-Frame reduces voices from people outside the shot.
Every one of these edits a single clip. Photos has no timeline, no text or captions on video and no way to join two clips.
Photos vs iMovie vs Wavcut: which app for which edit?
Checked against Apple's support pages and the App Store on November 2, 2026. Wavcut is our app; its column comes from the product itself, limits included.
| Job | Photos | iMovie | Wavcut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trim start and end | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Remove a middle section | No | Yes, by splitting | Yes, silences cut automatically; every cut toggleable |
| Join several clips | No | Yes | Yes, b-roll layered over your main take |
| Captions from speech | No | Not listed on its App Store page | Yes, on-device on Free; AI captions in 30+ languages on Pro and Max |
| Change speed | High-frame-rate and Slo-mo videos | Yes | No |
| Saved style for every video | Copy and paste edits | Not listed on its App Store page | Yes, presets (captions, ratio, b-roll rules, cuts) |
| Price | Built in | Free | Free to start; watermark-free exports on Pro and Max |
The short reading: Photos for quick fixes to one clip, iMovie when you are assembling a story by hand, Wavcut when you talk to the camera and want the cuts, captions and cutaways done before you open the timeline.
A worked example: one talking-head take, start to finish
Say you filmed a 60-second tip for Reels. The take has a false start, three long pauses where you checked your notes, and you want captions because most people watch with the sound off. Here is how each route handles it.
Photos only
Trim the false start off the front. The three pauses stay, because they sit in the middle. Crop to 9:16 if you shot wider. There is no way to add captions, so they would have to come from the app you post to or a second editor.
iMovie
Add the clip to a project, then split around each pause: two splits per pause and a delete, six splits for the three of them, each placed by scrubbing to the right frame. iMovie adds animated titles, but its App Store page lists no automatic captions, so plan on another app for those.
Wavcut
Pick your preset and add the clip. The pauses are detected and cut on the phone, captions are transcribed and styled in your preset's look, and if your preset uses b-roll, cutaways from your collections are placed over the story. You trim the false start, read the captions once for misheard words, and export. The render happens on the iPhone and lands in Photos.
The more of your videos look like this one, the more an auto-editor saves. If you mostly film travel clips set to music, iMovie is the better fit.
How do I auto-edit a video on iPhone?
An auto-editor does the first pass that you would otherwise do by hand, then gives you a normal timeline to adjust. In Wavcut that first pass comes from a preset: the aspect ratio, caption style and position, which b-roll collections to pull from and how often, and which auto-edits to run. The pieces:
- Silence removal runs on the device before the editor opens.
- Captions transcribe with Apple Speech on the Free plan, so nothing leaves the phone. Pro and Max send only the audio for AI captions in 30+ languages.
- B-roll is placed from collections you build once, timed by your preset.
- Audio mode lets you record a voiceover in the app and fills the visual track with b-roll, for videos where you do not want to be on camera.
The limits, so you can decide before you install: Wavcut is iPhone-only for now, has no speed control, and Free exports carry a watermark. If you are weighing it against CapCut, our Wavcut vs CapCut comparison goes feature by feature, and how to add captions to a video on iPhone covers captions in more depth.