How to rotate iPhone and iPad videos taken in the wrong orientation

Whether you accidentally took a video in the wrong orientation, or someone shared a video with you that you’d like to edit, follow along for how to rotate iPhone and iPad videos taken in the wrong orientation.

There are a few different scenarios when recording a video on iPhone or iPad in the wrong orientation can happen. One of the most common is the gyroscope not recognizing the orientation of how you’re holding your iPhone or iPad before you hit the record button.

You may have already discovered that you can’t change the orientation of a video once it’s been taken in the Photos app on iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

There are two relatively simple solutions, but there are a handful of steps involved. We’ll take a look at using the iMovie plugin for Photos on iOS as well as using iMovie on Mac.

It’s smoother do this on iPhone or iPad, but if you don’t want to download iMovie to your iOS device (almost a 700MB app) or rarely find yourself needing to do this, using your Mac may be easiest.

How to rotate videos taken on iPhone and iPad in the wrong orientation

On iPhone and iPad

1. Download iMovie for iOS
2. Open Photos and pull up the video you’d like to rotate
3. Tap Edit, then tap the circle with … and then the More icon with …
4. Now toggle iMovie to green, tap Done, then tap iMovie
5. Use two fingers to rotate the video
6. Tap Done in the top right corner

(thanks Kyle Seth Gray and @SlowlyUnbending!)

Here’s how this looks:

Now you can use two fingers to rotate your video to the correct orientation.

On Mac

1. Open iMovie or Final Cut Pro (we’ll use iMovie for this tutorial)
2. Import the video you’d like to rotate from Photos or elsewhere to iMovie
3. Select the clip on the left hand side of iMovie (you’ll see it highlighted in yellow)
4. On the right hand side, click the crop icon in the top right corner (see images below)
5. Click the rotate button
6. Export your video and add it back to the Photos app

Here’s a detailed walkthrough of the process with images:

After opening iMovie, click Import Media.

Find the movie you’d like to rotate (you can drag and drop it from Photos to your desktop for ease).

Click Import Selected in the bottom right corner.

Now click on the movie you imported so it’s highlighted in yellow as shown below:

Now, on the right hand side of iMovie, look for the crop icon, now you can use the rotate buttons.

You should now have your video in the correct orientation.

To export it back to the Photos app and have it in your library on iPhone, iPad, Mac, click File → Share → File…

You can adjust the quality, compression, and more before exporting the rotated video.

For simplicity, I exported the video to my Desktop. Now drag and drop it in your Photos library.

You can also share it with your iPhone or iPad via AirDrop.

If you’d like the video to show up with the same group of photos and videos it was originally with, you can click on it in the Photos app and hit command + I to edit the metadata (or right-click and select Get Info). Then double-click on the date to change it.

All fixed! Hopefully we’ll see Apple introduce the option to rotate videos in future software updates for to Photos on iOS and macOS without the need for the extra steps. But in the meantime, these solutions work to fix those pesky orientation issues.

For more help getting the most out of your Apple devices, check out our how to guide as well as the following articles:

• How to recover deleted photos on Mac
• How to permanently delete photos on iPhone
• How to access Photos in the Messages app
• How to share photos and videos with expiring links on iPhone and iPad

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: