How to turn a horizontal video into a vertical one for Reels, Shorts and TikTok

To turn a horizontal video into a vertical one, put it in a 9:16 frame (1080 x 1920 pixels) and decide what happens to the sides. You can crop the middle and lose about two thirds of a 16:9 picture, fit the whole picture with blurred or colored bands above and below, or reframe it with a crop that follows the subject. Phone gallery apps crop, video editors such as Clipchamp can fit or fill, and our free horizontal to vertical video tool fits the whole video over a blurred copy of itself in your browser, without uploading it. Rotating is not the same thing: it turns the picture on its side.

Quick answer: ways to make a video vertical

App or device	Where to do it	Keeps the whole picture?	Notes
Any browser	Our horizontal to vertical video tool	Yes, fit with a blurred or plain background	Free, on your device, MP4 at 1080p or 720p
Any browser	Our crop video tool, shape 9:16	No, crop	You place the box, and it stays put
iPhone, Photos	Edit > Crop > aspect ratio button > 9:16	No, crop	Undo later with Revert
Android, Google Photos	Crop > Aspect ratio	No, crop	Google’s example is a square
Windows, Clipchamp	Size button > 9:16, then Fit or Fill	Yes with Fit, no with Fill	Blur fill effect for a blurred background
YouTube app	Your video > Remix > Edit into a Short	Up to 60 seconds	Your own public videos only
CapCut	Adjust > Auto Reframe (mobile)	No, reframe	Needs CapCut Pro

Vertical video sizes for Reels, Shorts and TikTok

Reels, Shorts and TikTok are all made for a phone held upright. YouTube describes Shorts as vertical videos (YouTube Help), and Meta recommends 9:16 for reels to avoid cropping or blank space (Meta for Developers). 1080 x 1920 is a 9:16 frame at full HD, and it is the most a Short can use. Checked in November 2026:

Where	Shape	Size	Length
Instagram Reels	Any ratio from 1.91:1 to 9:16	At least 720 pixels and 30 frames per second	Up to 20 minutes; over 3 minutes is not recommended to new audiences
YouTube Shorts	Square or vertical	Up to 1080p	Up to 3 minutes
TikTok	Vertical, 9:16	Not given on the help page we used	Up to 60 minutes uploaded in the app, 10 recorded in it
WhatsApp Status	Not stated; vertical fills the screen	HD is not supported for statuses	Up to 90 seconds, MPEG-4 or 3GP

Sources for the table: Instagram on reel sizes (Instagram) and length (Instagram); YouTube on Shorts resolution and length (YouTube Help) and on which videos count as Shorts (YouTube Help); TikTok Support on video length (TikTok); WhatsApp on statuses (WhatsApp). TikTok’s limits can differ by account and by where you upload, so check its upload screen.

Two details matter for a horizontal video. Instagram accepts a 16:9 reel as it is, since 16:9 falls inside its range, but it fills only part of the screen. YouTube treats a 16:9 upload as a regular video: its help says videos up to three minutes with a square or vertical aspect ratio are categorized as Shorts, and it suggests a wider ratio such as 16:9 when you want a long-form video (YouTube Help). Meta’s ad specs recommend 1440 x 2560 for Reels ads (Meta), but for ordinary posts 1080 x 1920 clears every limit above.

Three ways to go vertical: crop, fit or reframe

Method	What you keep of a 16:9 video	Works best for	Watch out for
Crop to the center	The middle 32% of the width	Talking heads, one subject that stays in the middle	Anything near the edges is gone, including text and people at the sides
Fit with blurred or colored bands	All of it, at about 32% of the frame’s height	Group shots, scenery, slides, screen recordings, sport	The picture is small; a third of the screen holds the action
Reframe by tracking the subject	A 9:16 window that moves with the subject	One person or object moving around the frame	Sides are still lost, and the apps that do it may charge (CapCut’s needs Pro)

The percentages are our own arithmetic for a 16:9 video in a 1080 x 1920 frame. A crop keeps a 608 x 1080 slice of a 1920 x 1080 video. A fit shows the whole video at 1080 x 608 in the middle of the frame, and the background fills the other 68%. If the new shape is 4:5 or square instead, a crop keeps about 45% or 56% of the width.

Fitting has one more advantage. Apps draw buttons and captions over vertical video, and for Reels ads Meta suggests keeping the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% on each side free of text and logos (Meta). A fitted 16:9 picture sits between about 34% and 66% of the height, so most of those overlays land on the background instead of your picture. Keep your own titles away from its left and right edges.

Make a video vertical without cropping, in your browser

Our horizontal to vertical video tool fits the whole video into 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 or 16:9. The video is read and encoded by your browser, so it is never uploaded, and there is no watermark, account or daily limit.

1. Open the tool and tap Choose a video, or drop the file on the page. It opens MP4, MOV, WebM and MKV files.
2. Keep Shape on 9:16 for Reels, Shorts, Stories and TikTok, or pick 4:5 or 1:1 for a feed post.
3. Under Background, keep Blurred video for a soft, darkened copy of the video behind it, or choose Black, White or Color. A plain background reads better behind slides and screen recordings, where a blurred copy of text is just smudges.
4. Under Size, keep 1080p, sharpest, or pick 720p for a smaller file. To use only one stretch of a long recording, open Use only part of the video and set the start and end.
5. Press Make the 9:16 video, keep the tab open while it works, then press Download. You get an H.264 MP4.

The tool keeps the video’s own frame rate up to 60 frames per second and copies AAC or MP3 sound without re-encoding it. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no file size cap. The new video is built in memory up to about 500 MB on a computer or 200 MB on a phone; Chrome and Edge on a computer write a bigger one straight to a file, and other browsers warn you first. On an iPhone, use Safari 26 or later. Some browsers cannot decode iPhone videos recorded in HEVC; the tool says so before it starts.

To crop instead, use our crop video tool: pick 9:16, drag the box over the part you want and set the size to 1080p for a 1080 x 1920 file. The box stays where you put it for the whole video, so it suits a subject that stays in one place.

Make a video vertical on iPhone

The Photos app crops a video to a preset shape. Apple’s steps:

1. Open the Photos app and tap the video.
2. Tap Edit, then tap Crop.
3. Tap the aspect ratio button and choose a preset such as Square, Wallpaper, 9:16 or 5:7 (Apple).
4. Adjust the area you want to keep (Apple says you can drag the corners of the rectangle or pinch), then tap Done.

This is a crop, so the sides of a landscape video are gone from the result. To undo it after you save, open the video, tap Edit, then Revert (Apple). Apple’s crop guide for iOS 27 describes crops only, not a fit with bars or a blurred background, and we found no topic on making a project vertical in Apple’s iMovie User Guide for iPhone, version 3.0.6 (Apple). To keep the whole picture on an iPhone, open our horizontal to vertical video tool in Safari; the new video lands in Downloads in the Files app.

Make a video vertical on Android with Google Photos

Google Photos also crops videos to a new shape:

1. Open the Google Photos app and open the video.
2. Tap Crop.
3. Tap Aspect ratio to crop the video to a different aspect ratio. Google’s example is a square.
4. Tap Save at the top. Google says this saves a copy of the video with your edits (Google).

Google’s help does not list the ratios on offer, so check whether 9:16 is among them on your phone. It also says crop and straighten need Android 6.0 or later with at least 1 GB of RAM (Google). For a fit with a blurred background, use our tool in Chrome or Samsung Internet.

Make a video vertical on Windows with Clipchamp

Clipchamp, Microsoft’s video editor, can fit or fill. Microsoft’s steps for personal accounts:

1. Open your project and select the size button on the floating toolbar above the stage.
2. Hover over the presets to preview them and select 9:16. The presets are 9:16, 16:9, 1:1, 4:3, 4:5, 2:3 and 21:9.
3. The video now sits in the tall frame with bars. To fill the frame instead, select the clip in the timeline and select the fill button on the floating toolbar, which stretches or crops the video to fill the frame. Drag the clip in the stage to reposition it, or select the fit button to bring the borders back (Microsoft).

Microsoft notes there is currently no way to set all clips to fit or fill at once, so check each clip. To swap the black bars for a blurred background, Clipchamp’s own guide says to open the Effects tab on the property panel and choose the Blur fill effect (Clipchamp). That guide was last updated in March 2025, so the labels may have moved.

Make a Short from a long YouTube video

YouTube has its own route for videos already on your channel. In the YouTube app, go to the watch page of your video, tap Remix, then Edit into a Short, select up to 60 seconds and tap Next to add text or filters. To change how the frame is laid out, tap Layout. Only long-form public videos you uploaded yourself can be used, and not private or unlisted ones, or videos with third-party copyright claims (YouTube Help).

On a computer, YouTube Studio has a Clips and Shorts tool: open the video under Content, select Clips and Shorts, then Create clip or Short and Short, choose the part with the transcript or the timeline, select Preview Short, then Create Draft. YouTube says the preview may show black bars at the top and bottom for some scenes, and the final version displays them as a blurred crop of the video (YouTube Help). For a file you have not uploaded yet, make it 9:16 first and upload it as a Short with Create > Upload videos in YouTube Studio (YouTube Help).

Reframe automatically with CapCut

A reframe is a crop that follows the subject. CapCut’s help describes Auto Reframe as adjusting a video’s composition to fit different aspect ratios while keeping the main subject in frame. Since its free promotional period ended, it needs a CapCut Pro subscription. On a phone, tap Adjust, then Auto Reframe while editing; on a computer, go to Video, then Auto Reframe (CapCut). It still crops, so whatever the reframe leaves out is gone. Our tool does not reframe: it keeps the whole frame and adds nothing generated.

Rotating is not the same as making a video vertical

Rotating turns the whole picture 90 degrees. A normal landscape video rotated that way becomes tall, but the people in it lie on their sides. Rotation is the right fix only when a video plays sideways because the phone was turned while recording. A landscape video that plays the right way up needs a new frame instead: a crop or a fit, as above.

Your video	What it needs	Tool
Plays sideways, horizon standing upright	Rotate 90 degrees	Rotate video
Plays upside down	Rotate 180 degrees	Rotate video
Plays correctly but is wide	Fit or crop to 9:16	Horizontal to vertical video or crop video
Mirrored, text reads backwards	Flip	Rotate video, which also mirrors

For H.264 and HEVC videos, our rotate video tool writes the turn into the file’s rotation setting, which is quick and leaves the picture untouched. Mirroring works the same way as flipping a photo, which our guide on how to flip a photo explains.

Before you upload: file size and quality

• Keep the size the app expects. 1080 x 1920 uses everything a Short can take (YouTube Help). For Reels, stay at 720 pixels or more and 30 frames per second or more (Instagram).
• Start from the original file. A video that went through a chat app has usually been compressed already, and every new encode loses a little more.
• Compress to a size, not a guess. If an app or an email will not take the file, our compress video tool takes the most the file may be in MB, works out the bitrate and checks that the result fits. For Reels, set the picture size to 720p or larger; the tool never lowers the frame rate below 30 frames per second.
• Split long videos for Status. WhatsApp status videos can be up to 90 seconds long (WhatsApp). Our WhatsApp status video tool fits a video to 9:16 and splits it into numbered parts of up to 90 seconds.
• Mind the length limits. Shorts can be up to 3 minutes, and a Short over one minute with an active copyright claim is blocked on YouTube (YouTube Help). Instagram reels can be up to 20 minutes, but reels over 3 minutes are not recommended to new audiences (Instagram).
• Check the result on a phone. Play the vertical file full screen before you post it, and look for text or faces hidden under where the app puts its buttons.

Need the edges of a video back rather than a new shape? Our guide on how to uncrop a video covers what can and cannot be recovered. For photo sizes on Instagram, see Instagram post sizes and aspect ratios.