Quick answer: open the video in Photos, tap Edit, tap Crop, then tap the rotate button until the video is upright, and tap Done. Each tap turns it 90° counterclockwise. The same screen has a flip button for mirroring.
That covers most sideways clips. If you need a vertical flip, a precise angle, or a file that shows the right way up on any device, the tool above runs in Safari and saves straight back to your photo library.
These steps work on recent versions of iOS and iPadOS. Icons have changed a little between releases, but the rotate control has lived in the crop tool for years.
Open Photos and tap the video you want to fix.
Tap Edit to open the editing tools.
Tap Crop. The rotate and flip buttons appear near the top of the screen.
Tap the rotate button (a square with a curved arrow). Each tap turns the video 90° counterclockwise, so tap three times to turn it 90° clockwise.
Photos saves the change to the video in your library. To undo it later, tap Edit, then Revert.
The crop tool also has a flip button, next to the rotate button. It flips the video horizontally, swapping left and right.
Photos has no vertical flip button, but you can make one: tap flip, then tap rotate twice. A horizontal flip plus a half turn is the same as a vertical flip.
If your video is simply upside down, don't flip it. Tap rotate twice instead; a flip would leave it mirrored. Our flip video page explains the difference in more detail.
Mirroring is the same as a horizontal flip, so use the flip button in the crop tool. It's the quickest way to un-mirror a front-camera video where text reads backwards.
Settings → Camera has a Mirror Front Camera switch that controls whether new front-camera shots are saved mirrored. It doesn't change anything you've already recorded. For more on why selfie footage ends up reversed, see mirror video online.
If you're already editing in iMovie, select the clip in the timeline, then place two fingers on the viewer and twist them clockwise or counterclockwise. The clip turns 90° each time. The rotation is part of your project and is applied when you share or save the movie.
A 90° turn swaps the width and height, so a 1080 × 1920 portrait clip becomes 1920 × 1080 landscape. That's what you want when the phone was held the wrong way. If instead the video was filmed upright and you need it to fill a landscape frame, rotating isn't the answer; it would just lie on its side.
For a turn that keeps the original frame shape, use the tool above and pick a Canvas option. Fill zooms in so there are no empty corners, at the cost of some of the edges. Crop keeps the frame size and shows black, white or blurred bars where the picture doesn't reach. Blur under Corners fills those bars with a soft copy of the video, which looks better on TikTok, Reels and YouTube than plain black.
The tool at the top of this page works in Safari, so there's nothing to install:
Plain 90°, 180° and 270° turns with the default Expand canvas are lossless: the video and its sound are copied untouched and only the orientation flag changes, so they finish almost instantly. Flips and custom angles re-encode in the browser, which takes longer on a phone than on a computer. Nothing is uploaded, and there's no watermark. On Android? See how to rotate a video on Android.
The iPhone saves a rotation flag based on how it was held when you started recording. If the phone was lying flat, or you turned it after pressing record, the flag can be wrong. Rotating in Photos or with the tool above fixes it.
Yes. With the tool above, 90°, 180° and 270° turns are lossless, because only the orientation flag changes; the video and audio are left untouched.
If it is upside down, rotate it twice in the Photos crop tool (180°). For a true vertical flip, tap flip and then rotate twice, or turn on Flip vertical in the tool above.
Open the video, tap Edit, then tap Revert and confirm. Photos keeps the original, so you can go back at any time.
The straighten control in Photos handles small tilts. For a precise angle such as 12.5°, use Fine angle in the tool above, with Fill to avoid empty corners or Blur to fill them softly.
Yes. The Photos steps are the same on iPad, and the browser tool works in Safari on iPad too.