Use This Gesture to Take an iPhone Video Without Pausing Your Music

We’ve told you before about a few ways you can take a video even while playing music from your phone. The app Mideo is a mainstay on my home screen for this reason. If I’m recording a lifting workout in my garage, I’ll use the app so that I can still listen to Hit it Hard by Peaches during my heavy squats. (It helps, ok?)

But there is an even simpler way to take videos on an iPhone without pausing your music (or whatever else you’re listening to). Normally, when you tap “video” in the camera app, your audio will stop — even before you hit record. But in the “photo” mode, sound keeps playing and you can take still photos without stopping it.

The hack is that you can take videos while in photo mode if you know the right gesture to do it. And your music will keep playing the whole time. Here’s how:

1. With music or other audio playing, open your camera app and make sure you’re in “photo” mode. You can use either the front- or back-facing camera.
2. Point the camera at the squat rack (or whatever you would like to take a video of) as you normally would. Pro tip: use a tripod.
3. Place your finger on the shutter button and drag it to the right, toward the circular arrow button.
4. The area where the shutter button used to be will now look like a red square recording button, same as if you were taking a video. Boom: You’re already recording. Tap this button again to stop the video.

This feature is part of QuickTake and was introduced with iOS 13, to work with iPhone models XS, XR, and later. Those models were introduced in 2018, so it’s safe to assume every modern iPhone has the feature. (It works great on my iPhone 12 Mini and on Lifehacker deputy editor Joel Cunningham’s iPhone 14.)

There is one important difference between videos taken this way and videos taken with the normal setting: QuickTake always records in 1080p HD at 30 frames per second, whereas you can adjust the resolution and framerate for the regular video mode in your Settings. I have my video set to 60 fps, giving me smoother videos in case I want to step slowly through a video of a failed snatch in order to see exactly why I missed the lift. QuickTake also uses the aspect ratio that you have set for photos, which you can change from within the camera app itself.

If you’re fine with the default settings, QuickTake lives up to its name and lets you record videos quickly and easily, without needing an extra app to keep your music playing.