How to Record Your Screen on an iPhone

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In the past, you had to download third-party apps in order to record what was on your iPhone’s screen. But now, Apple has made it easy to save YouTube videos, save a clip of a game you’re playing, or teach your friends and family how to do anything on their iPhone. Here’s how to record everything on your iPhone screen and how to edit the video.

How to Screen Record on Your iPhone

To record your screen on an iPhone, go to Settings > Control Center and tap the green plus sign next to Screen Recording. Then open the Control Center and tap the screen recording icon. Finally, select the red bar at the top of your screen to stop recording.

Open the Settings app on your iPhone. If you don’t know where this app is, you can swipe down from the middle of your home screen and use the search bar to find it.
Then scroll down and select Control Center.
Next, tap the green plus icon next to Screen Recording. This will move the Screen Recording option up to the bottom of the list under Included Controls.
Note: You can hold and drag the three-line icon next to any of the controls to reposition them in the list. This will also reposition the icons in your Control Center.
Then open the Control Center. You can do this by swiping down from the top-right corner of your screen on an iPhone X or a newer model. If you have an older iPhone, you can open the Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of your screen.
Note: If you want to find out what model iPhone you have, check out this guide from Apple.
Next, tap the screen-recording icon. This is the icon of a big dot inside a circle. After you tap this icon, it will turn red, and your iPhone will start recording your screen after a three-second countdown.
Note: If you don’t see this icon in your Control Center, try scrolling down. Unless you manually changed the order of your Control Center icons in the previous step, the screen recording option will be the last icon on your screen.

Note: If you also want to record audio along with your video, tap and hold the screen-recording icon in your Control Center instead of just tapping it. Then tap the microphone icon and select Start Recording.

Note: The list of apps above the Start Recording button will change where your screen recording is saved. If you choose Photos, your screen recording will be saved to your iPhone. The other options will allow you to share your iPhone screen on Zoom, Skype, and other apps.

Note: You might not hear audio from your iPhone while it is recording, but your video still might have audio. Also, some apps will not allow you to record audio, and you cannot record your audio when making a phone call or screen mirroring.
Finally, tap the red bar at the top of your screen and select Stop Recording. You can also open the Control Center and tap the screen recording icon again.

Once your video is processed, you will see a notification at the top of your screen that tells you where your screen recording was saved. You can tap this notification to quickly view your video.

Note: If you recorded audio, make sure to tap the unmute button when watching your video in the Photos app.

After viewing your video, you can easily edit it to trim the beginning or end, crop the image, add a filter, and more. Here’s how:

How to Edit Your Screen Recording on an iPhone

To edit a screen recording on your iPhone, open the Photos app and select your video. Then tap Edit in the top-right corner of your screen, and you will see different editing tools appear below the video. Once you’re done editing your video, tap Done to save your changes.

Note: the Edit button might also appear in the bottom-right corner, depending on how you open the video.

Here are all the editing options you can use on any videos saved on your Photos app:

How to Cut and Trim Video on iPhone

To cut or trim your video, tap the video camera icon. You can then tap and hold either end of the yellow box to trim the beginning or end of the video.

Note: If you tap and hold either end of the yellow box and scrub through the video slowly, it will magnify the timeline to make it easier to trim your video.

How to Edit Color and Lighting

To edit the color and lighting of your video, tap the icon that looks like a dial with dots surrounding it. From there, you can tap the different options to adjust the contrast, shadows, sharpness, brightness, and more.

how to edit screen recording iphone 3 scaled

Once you select an option, you can swipe left and right on the scroll bar below to change each setting.

How to Add Filters

Just like with pictures, you can also add filters to your video to make them warmer, cooler, or turn them black and white. To do so, tap the icon with the three overlapping circles and choose one of the filters.

How to Crop a Video on iPhone

You can also crop a video to remove the unnecessary portions, like the black bars on the sides of a video. To do this, drag the wire box around the video to include the parts you want to keep. Everything outside this box will be cropped out.

You can also use the buttons in the top-left corner to flip the video 90 degrees counter-clockwise or flip the video, so the left side of the image is on the right.

Once you are finished editing your screen recording, make sure to tap Done in the bottom-right corner. Then you can choose whether to save over the existing video or save a new version.