How to Reverse a Video on an iPhone or iPad

Apple Photos and iMovie can’t reverse videos, so you’ll need to resort to third-party video editing apps to do this. While there are plenty to choose from on the App Store, VN Video Editor is the best free video editing app to reverse videos on an iPhone. Let’s see why and how to use it.

Using VN Video Editor to Reverse a Video on an iPhone

VN Video Editor is a free video editor app for the iPhone. Unlike most free video editors, it doesn’t add a watermark to your edited clips, eliminating the need to pay for a premium version or use another program to remove the watermark.

Being free, it too has a few limitations. Chief among these is the ability to edit only 100 video clips with the free plan, after which you need to upgrade to the paid plan to continue using it. However, this shouldn’t matter unless you’re looking for an app to reverse video clips regularly.

Using the app to reverse a video clip is straightforward. Start by downloading VN Video Editor to your iPhone from the App Store.

Open the app. Then, allow it access to your Photos library by tapping on “Settings” on the pop-up menu, selecting “Photos” on the following screen. Select “Limited Access” or “Full Access” per your preference.

Once done, head back to the app and tap the “New Project” button at the top. Choose “Video-Based” on the pop-up card and tap “Save.”

Find the video you want to reverse, tap on it, and hit the arrow button in the bottom-right corner to import the video into the editor.

Now, swipe left on the toolbar at the bottom until you find the “Reverse” tool.

Tap on it, and the VN Video Editor app will start processing the video clip. The time it takes to finish depends on the length of your video clip.

Previewing and Exporting Your Video

When it’s done, you can preview the reversed clip. Simply tap the play button at the top of the timeline, and it’ll start playing the video. For a better viewing experience, you can tap the icon with outward-pointing arrows in the bottom-right corner of the video clip, and it’ll rotate the screen and play the video in landscape orientation.

When you’re done previewing, tap the arrow icon again to go back to the editing screen. While you’re here, you can also perform other edits to your video clip if you want. For instance, you could tap the square icon next to the “Original” text at the top to change the video’s aspect ratio to match that of Instagram or YouTube, if required.

Finally, when you’re pleased with the video, tap the blue export (Share) icon in the top-right corner.

Then, tap the “Export” button on the following screen and wait for the VN Video Editor app to finish processing. Once it’s done, it’ll save the reversed video clip to your library in the Photos app.

By default, VN Video Editor will export the reversed video clip with its original settings (the same settings in which the video was recorded). However, if you want, you can export it with different settings for the resolution, frame rate, and bit rate.

To do this, after you’ve reversed the clip, tap the export button and go to the “Manual” tab. From here, change the export settings and tap “Export.”

VN Video Editor makes reversing videos on the iPhone super easy. Being a full-fledged video editor app, VN Video Editor packs many more editing tools, ranging from trimming and splitting to auto-captions, audio integration, and color-grading effects, among others. As such, in addition to reversing video clips, you can use it for other video editing operations as well.

If you don’t like fiddling with your iPhone’s small screen and own a Mac, you can AirDrop the video clip you want to reverse to your Mac and use iMovie—or the best free video editor DaVinci Resolve—to play it backward. Then, save and AirDrop it back to your iPhone or use an app like LocalSend to share it wirelessly with other devices.