Our guide to social media video apps

Livestreams, GIFs and dynamic photos are all great ways to liven up your social media profiles. We’ve written up a handy guide to some of the most popular video apps available for your phone, showing you the best ways to utilise them.

Boomerang

Around since 2016, Boomerang is mostly used in conjunction with Instagram and its stories feature, though the images it creates can be used on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Boomerang works by taking a handful of photos in quick succession and creating a fun moving image that loops back on itself continuously. It’s a quick and easy way of generating quirky content for your social media, as it takes less time to produce than a GIF and requires less effort than filming a video.

Boomerang is available for free on the App Store.

Periscope

Periscope is another app designed to work with one social media site in mind – in this case, Twitter. Much like Facebook’s live feature, Periscope is a streaming tool that allows you to watch and broadcast live video from across the globe.

Live feeds can be shot from iPhones and iPads and viewed through smartphones, desktops or laptops, either using the app or Twitter's site. On the app, you can watch back recent broadcasts or browse older live streams by pressing the TV icon in the bottom left.

Periscope can be downloaded for free through the App Store, but you’ll need a Twitter account to set it up.

Boomy

If you already have content on your phone that you’d like to edit for your social media and Boomerang can’t do the job, Boomy might just be the thing for you.

It works by taking videos already stored in your iPhone and allowing you to edit them to create boomerangs, saving you the hassle of recreating the exact moment you want to share. Simply preview your videos and select the one that you want, then use the slider to select where your boomerang will start and finish. It’s ready instantly, and you can easily share your creations with your friends and followers.

Boomy can be downloaded for free on the App Store.

Hyperlapse

Another app that goes hand in hand with Instagram, Hyperlapse makes it easy to create smooth timelapse videos without investing in a ton of expensive camera equipment.

When you shoot a timelapse video with Hyperlapse, your footage will be instantly stabilised to smooth out the bumps and give it a professional, cinematic feeling. You can film an entire sunset in ten seconds, condense your three-day festival into a minute, or even make your 5k run look like you went around the block in the blink of an eye.

Download Hyperlapse from the App Store for free.