How to trim a video on your phone, from the browser

Your phone is where you watch videos and where you share them, so it's also where the need to keep just one part tends to come up. The problem is that phone editors want the video to be already in your gallery: download first, then import, then cut, then export. Four steps and a big file taking up space along the way.

From the link, without going through the gallery

There's a shortcut: doing it from the link, in the browser you already have. You paste the address, mark the stretch and download only that section. The full video never touches your phone, so it takes no space and there's nothing to delete afterwards.

Step by step

1. In whichever app you're in (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram) tap Share → Copy link.
2. Open the browser and go to trim a video.
3. Paste the link. The trim panel is already open.
4. Drag the two handles to the stretch you want. On YouTube you'll see the frame at each edge.
5. Tap 'Download section' and it saves to your phone.

Android and iPhone: where the file ends up

On Android, Chrome saves it to the Downloads folder; from there you can move it to the gallery or share it directly. On iPhone, Safari saves it to the Files app, and to make it appear in Photos you have to open it and use 'Save Video'. It's the same behaviour as any download; we cover it in where downloaded videos are saved.

Why this works especially well on a phone

• It doesn't take up spare space: the whole video isn't downloaded, only the section.
• It doesn't burn spare data, which matters on a phone: fetching 30 MB instead of 2 GB shows up on the bill and in the wait.
• There's no editor to install, which on a phone short of memory is exactly what you don't want.

What it can't do

It isn't an editor: it doesn't join clips, add text or music, or rotate. It cuts an interval out of a video that already exists online. And if the video is on your own phone rather than online, this is no use: for that you need the phone's editing app, or the converter if what you want is to change its format.

You can also cut from TikTok — which makes the most sense on a phone — or from Instagram. And if the section still won't fit where you're sending it, see trim or compress?.