We all love editing videos on our iPads and iPhones, but finding the right app is never an easy task. Whether you are editing videos or just taking some notes, you need the best apps to do it.
There are literally hundreds of video editors for iPads and iPhones on the App Store, which makes it harder to find the best one. To make things easier for you, here I have curated a list of the best video editing apps for iPads and iPhones. This is a result of my long-term research and testing to find the best video editing apps that have an intuitive user-friendly interface and the pro-level tools to edit the raw footage.
1. iMovie – Professional Grade Video Editor For Beginners
Let’s start with the free one. iMovie is developed by Apple itself and is one of the best free video editors for iPad and iPhone. As it is made by Apple, it syncs well with the Apple ecosystem such as Mail, Messages, iCloud, and Airplay to stream directly on Apple TV.
iMovie is best suited for beginners and those who take casual videos. The app provides 13 varieties of filters and 8 varieties of themes to create Hollywood-style trailers with matching titles, transitions, and music. Moreover, these scores were composed by some of the world’s top professionals.
Like other video editing apps, iMovie works very well on the iPad’s big screen. As a bonus, you can also add a keyboard and a mouse to the iPad to use the dedicated keyboard shortcuts, which will make the job quicker and easier. iMovie also allows you to upload your video on YouTube at 4K resolution directly within the app.
Pros:
- Built-in templates and filters
- Developed by Apple, resulting in the good integration with Apple ecosystem
- Final Cut Pro compatible
- Supports mouse, keyboard and magic trackpad
Cons:
- None
2. Adobe Premiere Rush – The Minature Of Premiere Pro
Adobe, the name is enough to grab this little yet powerful tool. When it comes to video editing, there are a lot of choices on the market and one of the most popular ones is Adobe’s Premiere Pro. It has been in the industry for almost two decades. With those experiences and technology, Adobe offers a lightweight, compressed, and minimal version called Adobe Premiere Rush.
Premiere Rush isn’t as capable as Premiere Pro, but it does give you decent tools that make it one of the best video editors for iPad and iPhone.
The user interface is simple and easy to use. It allows you to capture, add color filters, record voice-overs, change clip sequence, and many more. You can also sign in to Adobe Creative Cloud and sync your project between Premiere Pro and Premiere Rush.
With tools for adjusting exposure, vibrancy, contrast, shadows, temperature, and more, Premiere Rush is ready to help you with the basics of video editing.
It also includes some extra features such as the ability to change the aspect ratio of your video to portrait, landscape, or square. This helps you to share your photos on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok. Moreover, you can share them within the app.
You can save the modifications as a custom preset and use it to apply to other projects.
Merits
- Built-in filters
- Adobe Premiere Pro compatible
- Aspect ratio for Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok
- Share videos to social media platforms within the app
Demerits
- No croma key
- Few built-in transitions
3. Lumafusion – iPad App Of the Year 2021
Lumafusion wons the best app for the year for iPad in 2021. It is a simple but powerful video editor. It provides you with a lot of tools for professional-grade video editing but with a simple UI.
The first main feature is the multi-track functionality with 12 tracks of sound. 6 for the video and 6 for audio such as sound effects and music.
Other eye-catching features are the chroma keying for blue and green screens and the markers. Markers are nothing but a timestamp that allows the editor to make notes for a particular clip that shows up in the timeline.
Besides these, It provides you with all the basic and advanced tools for video editing such as the external monitor preview, headers for muting, hiding, and locking tracks, color creation, super slow motion with 240 & 120 fps, and more.
Additionally, there is a paid subscription service called Storyblock which includes thousands of royalty-free images, videos, and sounds.
Lumafusion is priced at $29.99 with an in-app purchase of story blocks [Monthly ($9.99) & Yearly ($69.99)].
Pros
- User-friendly UI
- Supports up to twelve tracks of video and audio
- Supports external display
- Croma keying
- Tons of royality-free backgrounds, audio and video tracks
Cons
- No distortion correction
- No 10 Bit support
4. Inshot – Best For Casual Editing
Inshot is a free video editor that’s easy to use, with plenty of editing tools for making good-looking videos. It’s perfect for vloggers and people who don’t have video editing experience, with features like trimming, adding music and sound effects, and rotating or flipping video clips.
You can add background music to the video from your iTunes library or the Inshot library. The app also provides a lot of video filters such as glitch, retro, and more.
The main downside of the app is the ads and watermark. You can be annoyed by ads while editing but they can be removed with a paid subscription.
Inshot is free to download and offers an optional paid subscription of $3.99 that removes the ads and watermark. If you spend more on the pro subscription that costs $3.99 per month or $14.99 per year, you can unlock more options and tools that further extend the possibilities of the app.
Merits
- Easy to use
- Edits Photos
- Quicker processing
- Tons of filters
- Croma key
Demerits
- The free version includes ads and watermark
5. Filmmaker Pro – Tons Of Readymade Illustrations
Filmmaker Pro is an intermediate video app for iPad and iPhone. It gives you advanced controls over the color gradient, saturation, white balance, and contrast.
This app comes preloaded with 39 professional transition effects and 30 customizable filters. It also provides a set of 96 preloaded background tracks and a tone of fonts including retro, graffiti, and script styles.
You can try Filmmaker Pro for free with a watermark and limited features. However, similar to Inshot, you can remove the watermark with an in-app purchase of $29.99 or get access to all the features including the entire fonts collection and Chromakey for $69.99.
Pros
- Lots of fonts, transition, sound tracks, and filters
- Advanced options and features
- Builtin drawing tool
Cons
- The free version includes watermarks
- Most features are paid
6. Quick – Must Have For Go Pro Users
If you’re a Go Pro user, then this is a must-have video editor. This app was officially from the Go Pro company to integrate with Go Pro. This unlocks more potential such as recognizing faces, smiles, cheers, jumps, and more.
This video editing software offers 26+ customizable themes, adjustable fonts, graphics and filters, and varying levels of filter intensity. It also allows you to trim, zoom, rotate video clips and reorder them as you see fit. Adding GPS stickers is a unique feature that most other video editors do not offer.
Besides these fancy features, this app updates your Go Pro firmware, making this a must-have app for Go Pro users.
Moreover, unlimited cloud storage for Go Pro users.
You can choose more than 100 songs from Quick’s library, use your own music from the iTunes library, or import music from clouds such as iCloud Drive, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
Pros
- Simple and quick to edit
- Amazing integration with Go Pro
- Unlimited cloud strage for Go Pro users
- GPS stickers
Cons
- Only basic tools are available for non Go Pro users
7. Kinemaster – Simple Video Editor With Professional Results
Kinemaster is Similar to Adobe, Kinemaster is also one of the most popular companies that offers video editing software. An app from that kind of brand won’t disappoint in any terms. It offers a few professional tools with a simple interface that makes it easy to edit and create professional-looking videos.
It supports multiple layers of videos, images, and special effects. You can edit your footage in any video format such as landscape, portrait, and square( best suits for Instagram). The background score and voice-overs can be added from the built-in assets store. Moreover, the store is filled with a lot of stickers, fonts, transitions, music, and more. Those can be downloaded for free and as well as paid.
Pros:
- Simple to use
- Offers built-in store with 2500+ assets
- Support croma key
Cons:
- The Free version includes watermark
- Only basic options are provided with the free version
8. Vizmato – Must Have For Hardcore Social Media Users
Vizmato is a simple video editor for iPad and iPhone designed primarily for people who use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. It has some basic video editing tools such as trimming and clipping with more than 40 visual effects, 20 video themes, and 140 background music to choose from. There is also a voice modulator that changes your voice to sound like a baby, ghost, etc. Moreover, Vizmato works as a video recorder that captures everything in HD with instant filters, effects, and themes.
There is a large community of Vizmato in which the users share their creations and of course, you can also be the one. The app is free to download with some limitations and demerits such as watermarks, limited visual effects, background music, and themes. However, the paid version will remove those limitations.
Pros
- Simple to use
- Built-in HD video recorder with instant effects
- Wide range of community to share your creations
Cons
- The Free version includes a watermark
- Many effects, themes, and background music falls on the paid version
9. Splice – With Auto Audio Sync
Splice is yet another easy-to-use video editor for iPad and iPhone that can be used with easy controls. The videos can be highly customizable with powerful tools such as trimming, cropping, adjusting colors and filters, effects, and most importantly the ability to auto-sync the video to best match the audio.
You can either use the music from your iTunes library or browse over a large variety of music from the inbuilt store or just record and give a voice-over that auto-sync with the video. Once the editing is done, you can easily share the video with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more. within the app.
Moreover, the app has been awarded by several popular publications such as life hacker as the best video editor for iPhone.
Pros
- Simple to use
- Auto-sync audio with video
- Built-in music library
- More than 6000 royality free music tracks
Cons
- none
10. VN Video Editor – Perfect for Small Screens
VN editor is a completely free video editor for your iPad or iPhone with no watermark. Even though the app is free, it provides some useful tools to edit and enhance the videos such as curve shifting, filter adjustments, and a handful of transition effects. With filters, you can choose over 50 kinds with 9 types. The app claims to be optimized for human usage, meaning that using fingers on the smaller iPhone screens will be much easier. For example, the controls of the app will be a lot easier to use with fingers, especially on smaller iPhones such as iPhone 8 or SE.
Pros
- Completly free with no watermark
- Offers some useful tools
- Easy to use controls on smaller screens
Cons
- None
Conclusion
And that’s our list of video editing apps for iPhone and iPad! Again, we’ve only covered the main features and functionality at play here, but these are the apps that we see as the current leaders.
Whether you’re looking for a video editor to edit a casual vlog or need some powerhouse tools to produce professional-grade results, these apps will let you do it.
On the list, all of them are free except one. However, most of them have a premium version that unlocks more options and features. I suggest you try the free version before making any purchases.
Do you know any video editing apps that the list is missing? Leave a comment down below.
