Compress a video to a smaller file on your phone

Overview

Choose a video and a quality level. High quality keeps the picture close to the original and is the safe choice for footage you care about; Balanced is the everyday setting for sharing; Smallest file squeezes hardest for chat apps and slow connections. Add a resolution cap of 1080p, 720p or 480p if a 4K original is more than the destination needs. A live estimate shows the expected size as you change the options, so you can stop when the number is right.

Encoding uses the phone's own hardware, in H.264 or, with the More efficient (HEVC) switch, in HEVC, which gives similar quality in a smaller file; the switch is hidden on devices without an HEVC encoder. The audio track is copied unchanged whenever possible, so speech and music are not degraded. Location, device and date metadata are kept, and HDR footage is saved as SDR. When the job is done, iEdit shows the result as before and after, such as 114 MB → 5.8 MB (−95%).

Compression is for the file that will not send: the two-minute clip that weighs hundreds of megabytes, the screen recording the mail server rejects, the folder of holiday videos that is filling the phone. If you need to hit a specific number rather than a quality level, Target size is the companion tool. Everything runs on your device in the background, with a notification when the smaller file is in My files.