How to blur a video on Android

How to blur a video on Android in Chrome

1. 1

   Pick the clip

   Open this page in Chrome and tap Choose video. Android then shows a picker for choosing a video stored on your phone.

2. 2

   Mark the details to hide

   Tap Blur or Pixelate. Keep Whole video to cover every frame, or tap Chosen areas and then Find faces automatically. For a sign, screen or plate, draw a box over it with one finger.

3. 3

   Adjust and export

   Drag the strength slider until the detail is gone, then tap Export video. Stay on this tab until it finishes, since Chrome may pause the work if you switch to another app.

4. 4

   Save or share it

   Tap Download video to save the file with your other Chrome downloads. Or, if you see Share or save to Photos, tap it to open the Android share sheet and send the clip to another app.

What Android can do without extra apps

The editing tools on your phone depend on who made it and which software version it runs, so it helps to know what to expect before you go looking.

• Google Photos can trim, crop, rotate and stabilize a video and add filters to it. It does not offer blur or pixelation for a chosen part of the frame.
• Some camera apps have a portrait or cinematic video mode that softens the background while you film. It is applied at recording time and works on the background, so it is not a way to hide a particular face or plate in a clip you already have.
• Gallery apps from phone makers differ. If yours has a blur or mosaic tool for video, it will be in that app's editor; if not, the browser method on this page works in an up-to-date Chrome.

Blur faces in an Android video

Tap Chosen areas and then Find faces automatically. A small face model (about 3 MB) downloads the first time, the clip is scanned on the phone, and every face found gets an oval that moves with the person.

Phones are slower than laptops at this, so a long clip can take a while to scan. Look through the result afterwards, because a face that is tiny, far away or turned to the side may have been skipped, and you can draw an area over it yourself and set its shape to Oval.

The face blurring guide explains detection and tracking in more depth.

Working on a touch screen

• Drag on the video with one finger to draw a new box. Drag inside a box to move it, and pull a corner to change its size.
• Tap an area's name in the list above the settings to select it before you change its times or delete it.
• To show an area for only part of the clip, pause where it should appear and tap Starts here, then pause where it should go and tap Ends here.
• If something moves, select its area and tap Track movement automatically. The matching runs on the phone, so expect it to take longer than on a computer.
• For a phone number, address or license plate, tap Black box rather than Blur so nothing of the original shows.

Where the blurred video ends up

Download video hands the file to Chrome, which stores it with your other downloads. You can open it from Downloads in Chrome's menu, or find it in the Download folder with your phone's file manager.

The share option uses the standard Android share sheet, so the clip can go straight to a messaging app, an email or a social app without a separate save step.

Making exports faster on a phone

• Cut the clip down with the scissors under the preview before you export, so the phone only renders the part you need.
• Pick a smaller size under Export settings if a 4K clip is slow or the phone runs short of memory.
• Close other tabs and apps during a long export to leave the browser more memory to work with.
• Turn off Keep sound under Export settings if you want the clip without its audio.