How to stabilize a video on iPhone

Photos’ Crop tool can straighten a tilted video, which helps a crooked horizon, but it rotates the whole clip by the same amount and doesn’t remove shake.

Choose the preset by how it was filmed

• Walking for vlogs and following someone: it smooths the bounce of each step.
• Running for running, cycling or a bumpy ride: much stronger smoothing than Walking, with more zoom.
• Tripod for a shot that should have been still, like a speech or a landmark: it holds the frame in place.
• Subtle if the clip is only a little jittery and you want to keep almost all of the frame.

If it says it’s already steady

iPhones steady video while recording, so many clips have very little shake left. If the studio says Already steady: there’s very little shake to remove., the bounce you notice may be deliberate movement: tap Adjust and raise Smoothness, or choose Tripod for a still shot.

What to expect

• The picture is zoomed in a little so the moving edges stay out of view; under Adjust, the line below Zoom limit shows how far. Framing set to Full frame keeps the whole picture and fills the edges instead.
• Motion blur from the original shake stays in the frames; stabilising can’t sharpen them.
• Recent iPhones record HDR video by default. The steadied copy is saved in standard dynamic range, so it can look slightly less bright and vivid than the HDR original.
• Very long 4K clips can be slow on a phone, and may run out of memory on older models. Trim to the part you need first, or use a computer.

If the picture jitters or buzzes even when the iPhone is resting on a table or a tripod, the problem is the camera, not the footage. Apple warns that strong vibration, especially from high-power motorcycle engines, can damage the optical image stabilisation and focus systems in iPhone cameras. A stabiliser can’t fix that; contact Apple Support. For how optical and electronic stabilisation differ, see OIS vs EIS.