How to make your own Memories video on iPhone, and what Photos will not let you change
Photos makes Memories on its own and shows them to you whether you asked or not. Making one on purpose is possible, but the button moves between iOS versions and the controls are fewer than people expect. Here is where everything is, and where it stops.
Make a Memory from an album, a day or a month
The reliable path works on any recent iPhone:
- Open Photos and go to an album, or to Library and pick Months or Days.
- Tap the More button (the three dots).
- Choose Play Memory Movie.
Photos builds the movie from what is in that album or that stretch of days. That is the whole input: you choose the container, Photos chooses the clips inside it.
On iOS 18 and later, Photos also has a Create option in the Memories section where you type what you want, such as “the beach days in July with the kids”. It needs a device that runs Apple Intelligence, so it is not on every phone. The result is still assembled by Photos; the text steers the selection, it does not give you an editor.
Change the music
While the memory plays, tap the screen, then the Memory mixes button. Swiping left changes the whole mood: a mix is a song plus pacing plus a look. The Music button inside it opens the song list.
What you can pick depends on your subscription. With Apple Music you can search the full catalogue, and Photos suggests songs it thinks fit. Without it you get the built-in memory soundtracks, which are fine but recognisably “Memories”. There is no way to use your own file.
If you share the memory and the song cannot be shared, Photos asks you to pick another. Apple’s guide covers the exact taps per iOS version.
Change the length
Open the More menu while the memory plays and pick Short, Medium or Long. How long each is depends on how many photos and clips are in the memory; a day with twelve clips cannot become a long movie. On Mac the same three options are in the toolbar.
Add or remove clips
From the same menu, Manage Photos lets you tick and untick what is included, and the grid lets you reorder. That is the closest Memories gets to editing.
What you cannot do
- Say what the film is about. “Keep the beach, skip the drive” is not an instruction Photos accepts, except as the iOS 18 text prompt on supported devices, and even there it picks once.
- Cut to the beat. The pacing comes from the mix, not from the music’s actual downbeats.
- Change the shape. Memories render for the phone screen. No square, no 16:9 for a TV.
- Choose the moment inside a clip. Photos decides which seconds of a 40-second clip survive.
- Use music you own. Only Apple Music or the built-in soundtracks.
For a memory that Photos happened to assemble well, that is enough. For a specific film, a trip cut to a specific track, it is not an editor and does not pretend to be.
When you want to direct it
Life2Film is the app we make for the case above. Spin the calendar to a day or a month, say in plain words what the film should be, pick music, and it cuts on the beat. It re-cuts in seconds when you ask for shorter, longer or a different mood, and every bit of the analysis runs on the phone: nothing is uploaded, there is no account. Since version 1.13 it can also assemble a short film from a day worth watching while the phone charges, which is the Memories idea with the controls left in.
If you only want the beat positions of a song, for an edit you are doing by hand, the free BPM detector on this site gives you every beat as a marker file.