Major Clips Update Has Features That Beat Snapchat And Tiktok

Today Apple released a major update for their video creation app Clips. This app allows the creation and modification of short video clips for iPhone and iPad for use on all sorts of social networks and messaging apps. The latest update to Clips enhances the user interface and makes the exceedingly important expansion to both vertical AND horizontal video.

The updated Clips app adds a selection of aspect ratios, all at once. If you're rolling with the iPhone version of Clips, the app automatically opens to a 16:9 project. You'll be able to record now with "expanded options" in aspect ratios in both vertical and horizontal position.

Oddly, before now you weren't necessarily able to view a video preview before sending a Clips video with a friend. Now you'll see a video preview, and videos can be shared in "any supported size using new export options."

Perhaps the most enticing bit of this entire app update is a new collection of content for videos. That includes six new arrows and shapes as well as eight new stickers and a set of 25 new soundtracks (audio files) that "automatically adjust to match the length of videos." That's something neither TikTok or Snapchat have really figured out to an acceptable degree of success.

There's a new iteration of Clips available for iPad, complete with a the new(ish) Scribble feature that's been enabled in a few other apps before now – so long as you're working with iPadOS 14. Scribble allows an iPad user to convert handwritten text (written with Apple Pencil) into typed text in Clips (and in other apps that support the Scribble feature.)

If you're using an iPhone 12, this update to Clips adds the ability to record in HDR. If you're using an older version of Clips, you'll still get perfectly fine video quality, but it won't have that extra little bump that HDR delivers right out the gate.