How to Trim a Video on TikTok

TikTok is a social media platform where users can upload short videos, add music, showcase their talents, and more! The social media app is experiencing great success and continues to grow more every day.

You may be new to the platform or have difficulty trimming your video. Either way, we’ve written this article just for you! TikTok has a lot of editing tools and effects, so it’s easy to get lost on your way to TikTok fame.

In this article, we’ll teach you how to trim your TikTok video and give you a few other helpful tips along the way.

It’s Fun to Share!

While many users create videos on the TikTok app to share with their fans on the app itself, its increasing popularity is partly due to the convenience with which you can share your creations on other social media apps. Whether it’s Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, or Facebook, TikTok allows you to share your videos at the touch of a button.

But many of these social media apps allow their users to share limited-length videos only. In such a scenario, you might want to trim your video before uploading and sharing it on other apps.

Thankfully, TikTok has a built-in trimmer that allows you to trim the videos you’ve just created. There’re also third-party apps that can help you with that. This article will show you how to trim your TikTok videos with minimum fuss.

Trimming Videos Using the TikTok App

There are a lot of ways to upload a video to TikTok. You can upload an existing video, Stitch or Duet someone else’s video, or record your own. This means that there are also different ways to trim your video. This section will review the various methods used to properly trim a video on TikTok.

Trim an Uploaded Video

Trimming videos using the in-built trimmer in TikTok is easy. The process remains the same on both Android and iOS devices. Just follow the steps below:

1. Open TikTok on your device and press the + icon at the bottom of the screen.
   
2. Click the Upload option to the right of the record button.
   
3. Select the video you want to upload to TikTok and click Next.
   
4. Use the slider at the bottom of the screen to trim your video.
   

After you click Next at the top of this screen, you can add other effects, text, music, and more. Then, you can continue to post as usual.

Trim a Video You Recorded on TikTok

If you use TikTok’s built-in camera function to record your video, you can still trim it. Simply follow these steps:

1. Tap on the + sign at the bottom of the TikTok screen to record your video.
   
2. Hold the red record button to capture the content you want to share, then press the checkmark icon to move to the next page.
   
3. Tap on the Adjust clips option on the right-hand side.
   
4. Use the red slider at the bottom to adjust your content.
   
5. Click Save in the upper right-hand corner when you’ve properly trimmed your video.

Fortunately, TikTok is so user-friendly that it automatically plays the trimmed video for you to preview before moving forward. This lets you easily adjust the video until it’s perfect.

How to Trim a Stitched Video

Stitching a video is one of the best ‘Reply’ methods available across any online platform today. If you’re unfamiliar with TikTok’s stitch function, it’s where you take a small snippet of someone else’s video and add your own content.

To do this properly, you’ll need to trim the original video to fit your own content into the 60-second time limit. But don’t worry; it’s really simple! Just follow these steps:

1. Tap on the video you want to stitch and click the share icon on the right.
2. Select Stitch from the menu that appears.
   
3. Drag the slider bar where you want to begin recording your own content. You can also trim the beginning of the video. This lets you grab a snippet in the middle or end of the video.
   
4. When you’ve trimmed the video, tap on Next at the top to add your own content.

Just like the method listed above, you can tap on Adjust clips to further trim your video before posting.

You Can Do a Lot More Than Trimming!

The appeal of TikTok is down to its amazing possibilities. Apart from trimming videos on the app, you can also use the Mixer option to set the relative sound levels between the sound you recorded and the sound clip you chose before making the video.

Then, there’s the Effects panel. Using this option will open a library with multiple effects, along with a timeline of the video you’ve just recorded. The great thing about the Effects panel in TikTok is that you can choose to add the effects only on certain sections of the video as well.

There are also options to Set the Cover for your video. It’s a feature similar to YouTube, which allows you to select a particular frame for your video as the cover of your creation.

Filters can be applied to the whole video and transform its appearance.

The last option, provided by TikTok, allows you to add Stickers to the video you’ve just created.

External Editors Are Helpful Too!

If, for some reason, the built-in trimmer of the TikTok app doesn’t fulfill your purpose, you have a host of external third-party apps which can help you in your quest. But please note that not all these editors are specific to TikTok videos and, as a result, might not offer customized changes like the app itself.

For Android users, you can use any video editing app to trim your TikTok videos. The most popular (and free) of these apps include PowerDirector, BeeCut, YouCut, and Inshot, among several others.

If you use the TikTok app on an iOS device, we recommend using Apple’s default video-editing tool, iMovie, to trim and edit your videos. You can also use Splice or the Filmmaker Pro Video Editor.

All these apps are convenient and can be used with no prior knowledge. We recommend you use the in-built editor in TikTok for trimming your videos.

But if you constantly need to edit videos that aren’t all created on TikTok, we suggest you go with one of the external apps mentioned in this article.

Frequently Asked Questions

Depending on your familiarity with TikTok, you may know a lot about it. But if you have more questions, we’ve included this section for you!

Can I trim a video after posting?

Unfortunately, TikTok doesn’t give us many options to edit the video after we’ve posted it. You can save the existing video to your phone and use the method above to upload it.

How do I trim the length of photos in my video?

If you want to use photos in your video, TikTok offers a few templates and the option to match the photos to a song. But, if you want to custom trim the photos, you will need to use the Green Screen filter.

Using the Green Screen filter, you can upload your images one by one. Hit the record button for each one, stopping at any point you’d like. This method seems to be the easiest way to trim and customize videos with pictures.

Go Create!

So, what are you waiting for? Go create videos using the TikTok app and share them with the world!

In case you still can’t quite figure out how to trim the video exactly the way you want, don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the section below. We’ll go through them all and help you as best as we can.