How to Find the Largest Videos on iPhone
A few long 4K videos can use more storage than thousands of photos. Instead of deleting apps at random, identify the largest clips first and decide whether to keep, compress, transfer, or delete each one.
Watch the complete tutorial
Download the App
Open the App Store, search for HEVCut, choose the app with the purple icon, and tap Get. Open HEVCut and grant full photo-library access so it can read video sizes and calculate estimated savings.
Sort iPhone Videos by Size
- On the HEVCut Home screen, tap Compress.
- Tap Filters and choose Videos under Type.
- Tap Sort at the top of the screen and choose Largest Files.
- Start at the top of the list.
The heaviest videos now appear first. This is more useful than sorting only by date when the goal is to create storage quickly. To rank by how much each clip could shrink instead of by its current size, choose Most Savings.
You can also open Settings → General → iPhone Storage to see which apps consume space, but iOS does not provide the same focused, sortable view of every video in your Photos library.
Check the Potential Saving
Each video in HEVCut shows its current file size and an estimated saving, such as "Save 40%." An estimate is not a guaranteed final number, but it helps prioritize the clips with the most useful tradeoff. HEVCut skips videos it expects to shrink by less than 5%, and if a result comes out larger than the original, it keeps the original.
Look first for:
- long 4K or 60 fps recordings;
- screen recordings;
- videos exported more than once;
- clips that are important enough to keep but larger than they need to be.
If a video is disposable, deleting it returns more space than compression. If it is a memory you want, compression can reduce its footprint while preserving a usable copy.
HEVCut's presets output 1080p by default. If you want 4K videos to stay 4K, tap Settings (the gear), choose Video Compression, and turn on Keep original resolution before you compress. The saving is smaller, but the full detail stays.
Compare Before Replacing the Original
Choose a video, run the compression, and compare the result with the original. The compressed copy is saved next to the original, and the original stays until you decide. Check text, faces, fast motion, and dark scenes. Tap Keep Compressed only when the smaller version still looks right to you, or Revert to delete the copy and keep the original.
HEVCut processes the media on the iPhone. Your video is not sent to a remote compression server for this workflow.
Reclaim the Storage
After replacing or deleting a video, remember that the original may remain in the Photos app’s Recently Deleted album. It continues to count against local storage until iOS removes it or you empty that album manually.
If the largest item is a screen recording, use the dedicated guide to compress a screen recording on iPhone. If you need room for a software update, see what to do when an iPhone update needs more storage.