Apple’s Clips video editing app has left the building. Launched in 2017, it was a video-editing app designed to allow users to combine video clips, images, and photos with voice-based titles, music, filters and graphics. The idea was to streamline the creation of short videos for sharing on social media sites.
In a support page on the Apple website, the company said the download of Clips was stopped on October 10, but existing users can continue to use the app on current or earlier versions of iOS and iPadOS. Existing users can also re-download the app from their Apple account if needed.
After its first appearance in 2017, Apple continued to add new options, like AR features and more advanced video editing tools, but recently, updates slowed down. When Clips launched, it appeared smart. The app used facial recognition to identify the people in your videos and suggest people to share them with. Setting it apart was Live Titles, which turned spoken words into on-screen text. That’s not all, it synchronised the text to the cadence of one’s voice.
At the same time, there has been a proliferation of similar apps, like Edits from Instagram. The Meta app is a rival TikTok-linked equivalent CapCut. First announced in January, Edits became available for free in April. It comes with advanced editing tools not found in the regular Instagram app, like AI animations created from static images, green screen replacement, and subject cutouts. Lately, the app felt dated compared to Sora, OpenAI’s generative AI video app that recently hit one million downloads.
Apple users on Reddit are not surprised. Some mentioned that they tried the app years ago, and many have never heard of it at all. Apple makes another consumer video editing app for the iPhone: iMovie. The iOS app has not been updated since December 2024.