Apple Discontinues Clips App

Some weekend news from Eric Slivka at MacRumors: Apple has cut the cord on Clips.

“Apple has essentially discontinued Clips, its video-editing app designed to allow users to combine video clips, images, and photos with voice-based titles, music, filters, and graphics to create enhanced videos that can be shared on social media sites,” Slivka reported on early Saturday morning. “The app has been removed from the App Store, and a support document on Apple’s site says that the app is no longer being updated and would no longer be available for download for new users as of yesterday.”

Clips has been a mainstay of the various iPhones I’ve used since debuting in 2017, although I can’t recall the last time I used the app—or even launched it for something. I remarked recently how Apple has a penchant for letting its App Store apps wither on the proverbial vine—which, as Slivka rightly notes, the company apparently did over the last few years by updating Clips only to address bug fixes and basic maintenance. As a diehard sports fan, my hope is Apple Sports isn’t destined to match Clips’ fate whilst I wait for Apple to someday make an iPadOS version. As I’ve often said in my coverage of Apple Sports, the app is one of my most favorite—and most heavily used—on my phone.

I remember covering Clips at the time of its introduction because, as ever, there were accessibility ties. To wit, Apple was boastful of the fact the app could generate real-time captions for its short-form videos; the captions were useful, of course, to Deaf and hard-of-hearing people so as to make dialogue more accessible and inclusive. Back then, I remember thinking how inspired it was given TikTok and Instagram Reels had yet to pervade the mainstream consciousness. Nowadays, the vast majority of these videos I see all have live captions enabled by default, and it’s heartening to notice the change as a lifelong disabled person who, coincidentally, has a level of congenital hearing loss.