How to merge videos: combine clips into one on any device

The free merge videos tool joins clips into one video in your browser. The file is made on your device, so nothing is uploaded, and there's no watermark and nothing to sign up for.

1. Choose your videos: 2 to 20 of them.
2. Put them in order, by dragging them or with the arrows.
3. Choose the shape of the finished video: “Like the first” (the first video's shape), or 9:16, 16:9, 1:1 or 4:5.
4. Choose how clips of another shape fit: Blurred background, Black bars or Crop to fill. Which to pick is further down.
5. Download one video: an MP4 in most browsers, a WebM in one that can't make MP4s.

It takes up to 30 minutes of video in all, and makes the merged video at up to 1080p, at the frame rate of the smoothest clip (up to 60 fps). Every clip is re-encoded, which is what lets clips of different shapes, sizes and sources join into one file, and why a long merge takes a while. A clip with no sound gets silence for its part, so the sound runs the whole way through.

Cut each clip down to the part you want before you merge, with the video trimmer: a second of fumbling at the start of every clip adds up. To go the other way and cut one long video into parts, use the video splitter.

The Photos app can't do it. Apple's guide to editing videos in Photos covers trimming, filters, rotating, speed and Audio Mix, but not joining clips. Use iMovie, Apple's free editing app:

1. Open iMovie and tap Start New Project, then Movie.
2. Tap each clip you want (or Select, to take a whole moment). A blue checkmark shows what's picked.
3. Tap Create Movie. The clips appear in the timeline.
4. To change the order, touch and hold a clip until it pops off the timeline, then drag it. To shorten one, tap it and drag a yellow trim handle.
5. Back in the Projects browser, tap the project, then the Share button, Share Video and Save Video to put it in your photo library.

Before you post, check the shape of what iMovie saved. If your clips were vertical and the video has come out with black bars at the sides, merge them in the free tool with the shape set to 9:16 instead.

CapCut works the same way on iPhone and Android: tap New project, choose the videos to merge, arrange and trim them on the timeline, and tap the export button at the top right. Making a whole clip in it is covered in how to make clips in CapCut.

Google Photos does it with a highlight video:

1. In Google Photos, select the videos you want to join.
2. Tap Create, then Highlight video.
3. Open the highlight video and tap Edit. Touch and hold a clip to drag it into a different order; tap a clip, then Remove, to take it out; Add photos & videos brings in more.
4. Tap Aspect ratio to choose the shape. If a song has been added, Volume balances the clips' own sound (“Video audio”) against it (“Soundtrack”), and Remove takes it out.
5. Tap Save.

Google notes that older devices may not be able to make highlight videos, and that the music it adds is for personal, non-commercial use only. For a video you'll post for a brand, remove its song. CapCut, above, is the other easy choice on Android.

Windows: Clipchamp. Microsoft's video editor may already be installed on Windows 11: search the Start menu for Clipchamp, or get it from the Microsoft Store. You sign in with a Microsoft account, and the free plan exports at up to 1080p with no watermark.

1. In My media, click the import media button and choose your videos.
2. Drag them onto the timeline side by side, on the same track, so they play one after another.
3. Trim a clip by dragging the handles at its ends. Where a gap is left between clips, hover over it and use the delete this gap button.
4. Set the shape with the aspect ratio presets (9:16, 16:9, 1:1, 4:5 and more). Clipchamp follows the shape of the first clip you add, and clips of another shape get black bars: select one and use the fill button on the floating toolbar to crop it to fill. Microsoft notes it has to be done one clip at a time.
5. Export.

Mac: QuickTime Player, with no editor at all:

1. Open the first video in QuickTime Player and choose View > Show Clips.
2. With nothing selected, choose Edit > Add Clip to End, pick the next video and click Choose media. Hold Option for Add Clip to Beginning.
3. Repeat for each video, then click Done.
4. Choose File > Export As and a resolution.

Apple notes QuickTime Player saves a .mov file and doesn't export MP4s. TikTok's web uploader takes only MP4 or WebM, so for TikTok on a computer, merge in the free tool instead.

If you're posting to one app, its own editor can join the clips as you post:

• TikTok: after recording or uploading, open the editing tools, tap Add (+) to bring in more videos or photos, and press and hold a clip to drag it into place. One editing session takes up to 35 items.
• Instagram Reels: tap Create, then Reel, and add videos from your camera roll. In Edit video, you can add more clips and reorder them.
• YouTube Shorts: in the Shorts camera, tap the gallery button to import clips, then use the timeline editor to reorder and trim them, up to 3 minutes in all.

Merge before uploading when you want one file for all three apps, or when the clips are different shapes and you want to choose how they fit. All the ways, side by side:

A merged video has one shape, so every clip that isn't that shape has to fit somehow. Pick the shape for where it's going first: 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, 16:9 for YouTube and most screens, 1:1 or 4:5 for feed posts (more in video sizes for TikTok, Reels and Shorts). Then, for the clips that don't match:

• Blurred background shows the whole picture, sharp, over a blurred, enlarged copy of itself, so the screen looks full and nothing is cut. Use it when something important is at the edges: two people far apart, a slide, a screen recording, a landscape. The cost: a 16:9 clip in a 9:16 frame fills only about 32% of the screen's height, so faces and text are small.
• Crop to fill fills the screen and cuts off the sides (or the top and bottom). Use it when what matters is in the middle: one person talking, a product, the action. From a 16:9 clip, a 9:16 crop keeps about 32% of the width, and anyone who moves out of it is gone.
• Black bars show the whole picture on black. It's the plainest look, and right when the rest of the video is letterboxed too. On Instagram it costs you: Instagram says it shows reels with borders less often.

To get one wide clip ready on its own, the vertical video converter crops it to 1080 × 1920 or fits it on a blurred background.

• Different frame rates. A merged video plays at one frame rate. A 60 fps clip in a 30 fps video loses every other frame and looks much the same; a 24 fps clip in a 30 fps video has frames repeated, which can make slow pans judder. YouTube's upload advice is to keep the frame rate a video was recorded at, so when you can, film every clip at the same rate. The free tool uses the smoothest clip's rate, up to 60 fps, so only a clip faster than that loses frames; a slower one has some shown more than once.
• Different sizes. A 720p clip between 1080p or 4K ones is scaled up to match and looks softer: scaling adds no detail. Crop to fill enlarges it further, so a small clip looks better whole, on a blurred background. The free tool makes the merged video at up to 1080p, so a 4K clip is scaled down to that.
• Sound jumping between clips. Clips recorded on different phones or in different rooms come in at different volumes, and the jump at each cut is what people notice. Level the loud ones before you merge, then listen to every join with headphones. If the clips' own sound doesn't matter, take it out with remove audio from video and lay one song across the merged video with the add music to video tool, so the music doesn't restart at each cut (see how to add music to a video).
• A file too big to send. Merging adds the sizes together. TikTok's web uploader takes files under 10 GB and 30 minutes; email and chat apps take far less. Shrink it with the video compressor; how to compress a video explains what you trade for a smaller file.

Length first. What each app takes, from its help pages:

• YouTube Shorts: square or vertical videos of up to 3 minutes.
• Instagram Reels: up to 20 minutes, but reels over 3 minutes aren't recommended to new audiences.
• TikTok: uploads of up to 60 minutes in the app (30 on the web), and up to 10 minutes recorded in TikTok.

Fitting the limit isn't the goal, though: on short-form apps, a tight minute usually holds people better than a long compilation. See how long a short video should be.

Other people's clips. A compilation of clips you didn't make is the textbook case of reused content. YouTube's monetization policies list “short videos you compiled from other social media websites” and clips of a show “edited together with little or no narrative” among what can't earn, even with permission. TikTok keeps “unoriginal or reused material without anything new” out of the For You feed, and Instagram stops recommending accounts that repeatedly post other people's content without adding to it. Merge your own footage, or add real commentary and editing of your own, and read YouTube's reused content policy first.

Merging to make clips? It's the other way round. If you're joining highlights of a long video (a podcast, a stream, a talk) into a reel, or stitching recordings together to cut clips from them, start from the long video instead. Paste a YouTube link or upload it to Clyper: it reads the transcript to find the best moments, cuts each one on whole sentences, frames it 9:16 on whoever's talking and captions every word. Each clip is its own 1080 × 1920 MP4, to post one by one, or to merge a few into a recap with the free tool.