Works with Your iCloud Library
HEVCut analyzes your entire iCloud photo library and finds all your videos. Compress them to save storage on both your iPhone and iCloud.
Completely Free to Use
Download HEVCut and start compressing videos right away. No payment required. Upgrade to Pro for unlimited compression, but the free version works great.
Free Up Your iPhone Storage
Videos take up most of your phone's storage. HEVCut makes them smaller so you can keep your memories without running out of space.
Videos are the biggest storage hogs
A single 10-minute video can take up over 1GB of space. If you have lots of videos, your phone fills up fast.
Make them 70% smaller without deleting them
HEVCut compresses your videos so they take up much less space. You keep all your memories, just smaller.
Instantly reclaim gigabytes of space
Free up 10GB, 20GB, even 50GB+ of storage in minutes. Finally have room for new photos and apps.
How Video Compression Works
Understanding why your videos are so large—and how HEVCut makes them smaller without losing quality
Why Are Videos So Large?
A video is really just thousands of individual images (frames) played in rapid succession—typically 30 or 60 frames per second. A single 4K frame contains over 8 million pixels. Without compression, a one-minute 4K video would be over 100GB. Even with compression, modern smartphone videos can easily be 300-500MB per minute at the highest quality settings.
Your iPhone records video in HEVC by default, which is already quite efficient. But videos from other sources—older iPhones, Android phones, cameras, and screen recordings—often use older, less efficient compression. These are prime candidates for re-compression.
What Is HEVC (H.265)?
HEVC stands for High Efficiency Video Coding, also known as H.265. It's the successor to H.264 (the previous standard) and delivers the same visual quality at roughly half the file size. It achieves this through smarter compression algorithms that better predict motion between frames and more efficiently encode areas of similar color.
When HEVCut compresses a video, it converts it to HEVC if it isn't already, and applies optimal compression settings. The result is a video that looks identical to your eyes but takes up 50-70% less storage space.
Why Can't I See the Difference?
Modern compression exploits how human vision works. Your eyes are very sensitive to edges, faces, and areas of high contrast, but much less sensitive to fine details in complex, rapidly-moving areas. Compression algorithms allocate more data to the parts you notice and less to areas where you won't perceive the difference.
The result: a compressed video that looks virtually identical to the original when you watch it on your phone, share it with friends, or even view it on a large TV. Professional video editors can sometimes spot differences when examining individual frames at 400% zoom, but in normal viewing conditions, the compression is truly invisible.
See the Difference
Same video, same quality, much smaller size
Simple to Use
Compress your videos in just a few taps
Fast & Easy
Compress multiple videos at once in just seconds
You Choose
Pick which videos to compress, full control
Private & Secure
Everything happens on your device, completely offline
Which Videos Benefit Most from Compression?
Not all videos compress equally. Here's what typically yields the biggest savings.
Older H.264 Videos
Videos from older iPhones (before iPhone 7), most Android phones, and many cameras use H.264. Converting these to HEVC typically yields the biggest savings—often reducing files to one-third their original size.
Screen Recordings
Screen recordings often have large areas of static content (UI elements, text) that compress extremely well. A 500MB screen recording might shrink to under 200MB with no visible difference.
Slow-Motion Videos
Slow-mo videos are recorded at very high frame rates (120-240fps), making them huge. Compression significantly reduces their size while preserving the smooth slow-motion effect.
Modern HEVC Videos
Even videos already in HEVC format can often be further optimized. iPhone videos are encoded quickly to save battery— re-encoding them with more thorough compression often yields additional savings.
Common Questions
QHow much smaller will my videos be?
Most videos become about 70% smaller. For example, a 1GB video typically becomes around 300MB with no noticeable difference in quality.
QWill my videos still play everywhere?
Yes, videos work on all modern devices including iPhones, Macs, Android phones, and Windows computers. Older devices might need a free video player like VLC.
QHow long does it take?
Most videos take 30-60 seconds. Longer videos take a bit more time, but it's fast and you can keep using your device while it works.
QIs the original video deleted?
The compressed video replaces the original in your Photos library, but the original goes to your Recently Deleted folder where it stays for 30 days. If you're not satisfied with the compression, you can recover the original within that window.
QDoes compression affect video metadata?
HEVCut preserves all important metadata including the date, time, location, and orientation of your videos. Your compressed videos will still appear in the correct place in your timeline and on the map view.
QDoes it work with iCloud Photos?
Yes, HEVCut works seamlessly with iCloud Photos. It can download videos from iCloud to compress them, and the compressed version syncs back to iCloud—freeing up space across all your devices.