How to Put a Video in an iPhone Frame

A raw screen recording plays like a debug capture. The same footage inside an iPhone bezel plays like a product demo, and the difference costs you nothing but the framing step.

Framing video is harder than framing a still for one reason: whatever you do to the first frame you have to do to all nine hundred of them. That’s what separates the three options below.

Option 1: Do it yourself in a video editor

This is the most control and the most work. Here’s the whole thing in DaVinci Resolve, which is the free one most people reach for.

1. Import the recording and a transparent device-frame PNG into the Media Pool.
2. Put the frame on V2 and the recording on V1. Resolve honours the PNG’s alpha, so the screen area shows through.
3. Select the recording and open Inspector → Transform. Adjust Zoom and Position until the footage fills the aperture. Unless you know the frame’s internal geometry you are nudging numbers and eyeballing the fit, and if you overshoot, the overflow hides behind the bezel and you won’t notice until you export.
4. Fix the corners. The screen is a rounded rectangle, so square video corners poke past the curve. Go to the Fusion page, add a Rectangle node, set its Corner Radius in the Inspector, and merge it as a mask over the footage, then match the radius to the frame by eye.
5. The status bar stays as recorded. There is nothing to paint over, because the clock advances while the video plays. Faking 9:41 here means animating a patch across the whole clip, which is why most people just leave the real time in.
6. If you want a transparent background rather than a backdrop, it’s another detour: on the Color page, right-click your node, choose Add Alpha Output, and connect the blue dot to the blue dot on the right of the node graph. Then on Deliver, tick Export Alpha, which only lights up on a codec that carries alpha.
7. Pick that codec carefully. ProRes 4444 only encodes on macOS and Linux in Resolve, so on Windows you’re exporting DNxHR 444, at file sizes that make a fifteen-second clip inconvenient to send anywhere.
8. Re-record one screen and repeat from step 2.

None of this is hard. It’s just eight steps and two page-switches per clip, every clip, forever, and steps 3 and 4 are guesses you re-tune each time.

You don’t need to buy a template for it either: the frames Screeny renders with are free to download.

Option 2: A desktop mockup tool

Dedicated mockup apps do the framing and the corner mask for you, which removes most of Option 1.

Two things to weigh. They’re generally Mac-only and paid, which is a real purchase decision for a clip you’ll post once. And your recording starts on your phone, so there’s an export-to-desktop round trip before any work begins. For the browser-based ones, that means uploading footage of an unreleased app to someone else’s server.

Option 3: Do it on the phone that recorded it

The recording is already on your iPhone. With Screeny the framing happens there:

1. Record your screen from Control Center
2. Share it to Screeny, or import from Photos or Files
3. Pick a device frame and background, then export

MP4, MOV and M4V all import. You get a real bezel for the device you’re targeting in the colour you want, a background from solid to gradient to an Unsplash photo, and (the part that’s genuinely awkward in an editor) a clean 9:41 status bar rebuilt on every frame, on the GPU, instead of a patch you’d have to animate.

The part that makes it a demo

Framing stops the footage looking raw. What holds attention is the camera moving when something matters.

On the keyframe timeline, each block is a zoom: set when it starts, how long it holds, how far it pushes, and which point on the screen it pushes toward. Pick an easing curve (Smooth, Linear, Ease In, Ease Out) and the camera ramps in, holds, and ramps back out. Two or three of those on a twenty-second clip is the whole difference between a screen recording and a demo.

Which should you use?

If the framed clip is one layer in a larger edit you’re already building in Resolve or Premiere, stay there and use a free frame. You’re paying the setup cost once for a project you were opening anyway.

For the common case (you recorded something on your phone and you want it framed and posted today), doing it on the phone skips the round trip and the eight steps. Save a preset and every clip after the first is share → apply → export. Exports are never watermarked, on any tier.

Frequently asked questions

What resolution does the framed video come out at? Video renders at your recording’s native resolution. Screeny frames it rather than downscaling it.

Can I get a transparent background instead of a backdrop? Yes. Set the background to transparent and export MOV with an alpha channel, ready to composite over anything in Resolve, Premiere or After Effects, without the Alpha Output detour in Option 1. That’s the bridge between the two: frame on the phone, compose on the desktop.

Does the status bar get cleaned on video too? Yes. The same rebuild runs on every frame on the GPU, so the time reads 9:41 for the whole clip instead of counting up.

Can I frame several clips at once? Up to 10 items per batch, and a batch can mix videos and screenshots so a whole set shares one look.

How much does a video export cost? 3 credits, and you start with 10 free. How credits work.

What about a still screenshot? Same job, fewer steps: How to Put a Screenshot in an iPhone Frame.