By Dan Moren

March 21, 2017 6:20 AM PT

Apple introduces Clips app to create and share videos

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Well, if your wildcard bet for today’s Apple announcements was an app for making short videos on your iOS device, I applaud your predilection for preternatural prediction. The company announced Clips, an app that lets you combine video, photos, and music into videos to share through Messages or on social media like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.

As you might expect from an app that seems pretty clearly aimed at something like Snapchat or Instagram Stories, the app includes a number of filters, like comic book styles, as well as speech bubbles, shapes, and full-screen animated posters. There’s also a new Live Titles feature, which lets users make animated captions and titles from voice alone; it sounds as though it leverages Apple’s Dictation skills to create captions as people speak, but it can also synchronize them with your video. It supports different text styling, editing, and even inline emoji, in 36 different languages.

Clips isn’t available yet, but will be on the App Store in April for free, working with the iPhone 5s and later, the new 9.7-inch iPad, all iPad Airs and Pros, the iPad mini 2 and later, and the sixth-generation iPod touch. You’ll need iOS 10.3 or later. (Which, hey, you’ll notice isn’t out yet, so at least we’ve got an idea when that appears.)

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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