Trim & Cut Videos on Android

How to Trim and Cut Videos on Your Android Device

They say that the best camera is the one you have with you, and more often than not, that camera is attached to your smartphone. Grabbing quick images and videos is easier than it’s ever been, but sometimes you hit that record button a little too early and get 34 seconds of fluff before the good stuff. Here’s how to fix that.

Just a couple of short years ago, trimming videos on a mobile device was more of a pain than anything, especially since it was a little different on every phone. Today, thanks to Google’s Photos app, not only is trimming videos quick and easy, but it’s also the same across the board, regardless of which device you’re using. Nice.

To get started, you’ll need to fire up the Photos app. This should be pre-installed on essentially every modern Android phone, so if you haven’t been using it, you’re missing out on some good stuff—like automatic backups. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free from Google Play.



If this is your first run with the Photos app, you’ll have to first set up the Back Up & Sync option. It’s toggled to “on” by default (which I personally recommend leaving on), so if you’re good with all the details, just hit “Done.” Now, onward to the actual video trimming part.



Go ahead and open the video you’d like to trim. See that little pencil icon at the bottom? That’s your button. Tap that little guy.



If this happens to be an older video and you’ve been using Photos for a while to back up your stuff, you may have to re-download it before the pencil shows up. To do that, just tap the three-button menu in the top right and select “Download.”



The edit menu is stupid-simple, with an easy-to-use selection tool for trimming, and a button to rotate the video. That’s pretty much all there is to it—highlight the section of video you’d like to keep, then tap the Save button in the top right. You can also hit the play button in the center of the video to check your selection before trimming, just to make sure it’s perfect.



Once the video has been trimmed, it will automatically save. The old video isn’t altered in any way, but instead a new video file is created. You don’t have to name it or anything—everything is handled automatically.



And that’s all there is to it. See, wasn’t that easier than you expected? No, no, don’t thank me—thank Google.