Samsung Galaxy camera app.
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It’s happened to all of us. You recorded a video, but your phone didn’t detect that it was turned sideways. Now the video is in portrait instead of landscape as you intended. Don’t worry, you can rotate it.

This usually happens if you’re holding the phone in a way that’s not firmly in landscape mode, like if you point the phone down. It can also happen if you open the camera app and start recording before it can change orientation.

On other occasions, you may rotate your phone while recording a video. The orientation is locked after you start recording, so the parts of the videos where you rotated your phone won’t look right. If that’s what happened to you, you’ll want to trim off the first part before rotating the video.

RELATED: How to Rotate a Video on Windows 10 or Windows 11

We’ll be using the Google Photos app to do this. It’s free and has tons of great features you may want to check out. However, for this guide, we’ll be sticking with the basics. You can skip through the initial set-up process.

First, find the video that you’d like to rotate.

Select a video.

Next, tap the screen to bring up the controls—if they aren’t already visible—and tap “Edit.”

Tap "Edit."

Switch over to the “Crop” tab in the bottom toolbar.

Select "Crop."

Now tap the rotate icon until the video is in your desired orientation.

When you’re done, tap “Save Copy.” Google Photos won’t let you overwrite the original video.

Tap "Save Copy."

It’s as simple as that—the new video will be saved in your gallery! Google Photos has a bunch of handy editing tools for both photos and videos.

RELATED: How to Screen Record on Android

Profile Photo for Joe Fedewa Joe Fedewa
Joe Fedewa is a Staff Writer at How-To Geek. He has been covering consumer technology for over a decade and previously worked as Managing Editor at XDA-Developers. Joe loves all things technology and is also an avid DIYer at heart. He has written thousands of articles, hundreds of tutorials, and dozens of reviews.
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Profile Photo for Cameron Summerson Cameron Summerson
Cameron Summerson is ex-Editor-in-Chief of Review Geek and served as an Editorial Advisor for How-To Geek and LifeSavvy. He covered technology for a decade and wrote over 4,000 articles and hundreds of product reviews in that time. He’s been published in print magazines and quoted as a smartphone expert in the New York Times.
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