Apple appears to be phasing out support for its video editing application, Clips, having removed the app from the App Store and confirming that it will no longer be making any further updates.
End of Updates and User Guidance
In a support page published on the Apple website, the company stated that as of October 10, Clips is no longer available for new users to download. However, existing users can continue to use the app on current or earlier versions of iOS and iPadOS and can re-download the app from their Apple account’s purchase history if needed.
Given that the app will not receive future updates, its functionality will likely degrade over time. As a result, Apple is actively encouraging current users to download their Clips videos (both with and without added effects) to their photo library. This ensures they can continue to watch and edit the videos using alternative applications like iMovie or other third-party editing tools.
A Relic of the Social Video Era
Launched in 2017, Clips was widely viewed as Apple’s attempt to compete with the emerging social video trends popularized by Snapchat and Instagram Stories. While it was not a social network itself, the app allowed users to quickly stitch together photos and videos with various media, including filters, emojis, and music. Early reviews of Clips suggested that its video editing capabilities were simple to a fault. The app’s original purpose was thought to be a way for Apple to showcase its hardware and software capabilities while offering users a means of content creation outside the increasingly dominant social ecosystems. Reports indicate that while Apple added new features after the initial launch, recent updates have been limited almost entirely to bug fixes, suggesting the company had already shifted resources away from the app.
The news of the discontinuation did not come as a surprise to many. Apple fans online expressed little shock, with many admitting they had only tried the app years ago or had never heard of it at all. For many, an app like Clips—which was built around real footage captured by real people—now feels old-fashioned when compared to powerful new AI tools like OpenAI’s generative AI video app, Sora, which recently achieved 1 million downloads and can generate entire clips without a camera roll.
Author’s Opinion
Apple’s quiet discontinuation of Clips is a textbook example of a company pruning an uncommitted, redundant product that failed to achieve critical mass. The failure was not the technology—which was functional—but the strategy, as Clips was never fully integrated into a dedicated social ecosystem, leaving it obsolete against the rise of generative AI. By retiring an app built around real-world footage in the same month that OpenAI’s Sora, which creates synthetic video, goes viral, Apple is tacitly acknowledging that the definition of “video creation” has fundamentally changed, and its resources are better spent investing in the next generation of integrated, AI-driven tools.
Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons
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