Since the 3GS, recording a video on an iPhone is simple: You tap the record button, shoot your video, then tap the button again to stop. Your video is saved, and if you want to record more, you need to repeat the process to start another clip.
While Apple has added plenty of extra video features over the years, from Cinematic Mode to 3D recording designed for playback on Vision Pro, the act of recording these videos has remained largely unchanged. At least, until iOS 18.
As Apple puts the finishing touches on its upcoming update for iPhone, it quietly added a new video recording option: As of the iOS 18 release candidate (RC), you’ll now notice a pause button in the bottom corner of the camera app whenever you record a video. If you tap the pause button instead of the record button, your recording will suspend, but not end. Tap the button again, and you can keep recording. You still hit the record button a final time to stop recording for good, but iOS will stitch together all of the clips you ended up shooting this session into one video file.
If you mostly record videos one at a time, this might not seem like a big deal. But there are definitely some situations where a pause button comes in handy. Namely, it can save some creators time editing their videos: Rather than shoot a bunch of individual videos, and cut and edit them together after the fact, creators can pause recording to set up a new shot. For casual outputs, like social media posts or vlogs, this new button may be a game changer.
Personally, I’m excited for an opportunity to relive the days of linear video recording: When shooting on tape, for example, you’d hit record, shoot your shot, then hit record again to, essentially, pause the video. Since everything was saving to the same tape, hitting record again just started filming where you left off last. When you ran out of tape, you’d watch your footage in order from start to finish.
Don’t get me wrong: The flexibility of digital recordings is far superior to methods of old. But I do miss this aspect of linear video. Maybe this small change will get more of us to casually stitch together multiple clips into one video, rather than end up with dozens of unwatched clips scattered through our libraries.
As of this article, the feature is still a part of the iOS 18 beta, and not yet available publicly. That said, Apple is dropping its upcoming update on Monday, Sept. 16. If you absolutely can’t wait, you can download and install the iOS 18 RC now to try it out. But come Monday, you can update your iPhone to try out this feature, in addition to the rest of iOS 18’s new features and changes.
