How to Use Action Mode on iPhone Camera

Action Mode offers an impressive stabilizing function to recording videos, which can be particularly handy if you’re moving or active while recording something else that is also moving. Essentially, Action Mode stabilizes the video to turn shaky camera videos into smooth videos, and it works really well.

For example, maybe you want to record a video of someone running and you’re running alongside them, or maybe you want to capture video of you skiing down a moguled slope and you want to smooth out the results, Action Mode works well for these type of scenarios, and many other activities.

Action Mode is basically like a software gimbal for your iPhone, stabilizing your movements to capture smooth professional looking videos.

To use Action Mode with your iPhone camera, you will need to have an iPhone 14 model or better, as earlier devices do not support this software feature.

How to Use Action Mode on iPhone Video Camera

Using Action Mode is really simple, here’s all you need to do:

1. Open the Camera app on iPhone as usual
2. Switch to “Video” mode by swiping until you’re at the Video recorder
3. Tap on the running icon so that it’s highlighted in yellow, indicating that Action Mode is enabled



4. Record your video as usual, with Action Mode enabled and smoothing out the results

Recorded videos in Action Mode will save to your camera roll as usual, found within the Photos app.

Action Mode is a great feature that is best experienced on your own to see how effective it is, but if you don’t have a subject handy at the moment to try this with, the videos embedded below from Apple demonstrate the features capabilities quite well.

Testing Action Mode on iPhone (via Apple) shows Action Mode in a variety of situations, including recording someone longboarding from skates and handing the iPhone camera off to someone who then runs on foot, recording a video of someone dunking a basketball, and a video captured of someone balancing a chair on their face while the person recording the video runs up a wall behind them. As you can see, all of the video situations would typically result in very shaky camera footage, but Action Mode smooths the footage out very well:

Action Mode commercial (via Apple) demonstrates the feature with an amusing video of a woman running sideways to capture video of a child running a race:

If you record a lot of activities and sports with an iPhone, using Action Mode is essential, and it’s useful enough that it may even inspire some users to upgrade from an older model to a newer iPhone just so they can have the feature. Combine Action Mode with a selfie stick or a Gimbal for iPhone and you’ll be in the action recording business in no time.

Have fun with this feature, and let us know what you think.