Apple's Clips App Adds Immersive AR Spaces Enabled With LiDAR Scanner

Apple today updated its Clips video creation app to version 3.1, introducing support for the LiDAR Scanner on the iPhone 12 Pro and the 2020 and 2021 iPad Pro models.

apple app clips
With the new AR Spaces feature, users can scan a room and then transform their space with immersive visual effects that map to the contours of the room.

With AR Spaces in Clips 3.1, users can easily scan a room and see a live preview of effects that bring dynamic lighting, falling objects, and immersive scenes to life. Using the rear camera on a supported iPhone or iPad, users will see effects appear on walls, floors, surfaces, furniture, and objects.

There are seven AR Spaces effects that are available with the update:

  • Prism: Ribbons of rainbow light scan the walls, floors, and objects in a room.
  • Confetti: Celebratory bursts of confetti fall and accumulate on flat surfaces.
  • Disco: Shining lights reflect off the disco ball that hangs from the ceiling of the space.
  • Dance Floor: Colorful tiles of light dance in patterns across the floor.
  • Sparkles: Golden sparkle emoji and white glitter fill the space.
  • Stardust: Magical trails of starlight encircle and follow a person in the video.
  • Hearts: Floating heart balloons bubble up within the space.

Clips has all of Apple's most advanced AR tools and is able to recognize people in the video, projecting an AR Space effect both in front of and behind the person, so the effects look like they're applied all around the space.

AR Spaces can be augmented with animated stickers, text labels, and emoji overlays, and the resulting videos can be recorded in all aspect ratios and transferred to social media sites.

Apple says that going forward, Clips will get monthly updates to introduce new filters, Live Titles, text, stickers, and posters "related to seasonal events and cultural trends." With the release of version 3.1, users can choose to opt in to notifications to get an alert when new content is available.

Tag: Clips

Popular Stories

New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

20 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
iphone 16 apple intelligence

Apple Drops Plans for iPhone Hardware Subscription Service

Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
iPhone 17 Pro Dual Tone Feature 1

iPhone 17 Pro Rumored to Stick With 'Triangular' Camera Design

Wednesday December 18, 2024 2:36 am PST by
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital." In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
elevation lab airtag battery

Your AirTag's Battery Will Last for Up to 10 Years With Elevation Lab's New TimeCapsule Enclosure

Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag. Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
apple tv 4k yellow bg feature

New Apple TV Rumored to Launch Next Year With These Features

Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year. Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
blackmagic vision pro

Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro

Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro. The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
mac pro creativity

Apple Launched the Controversial 'Trashcan' Mac Pro 11 Years Ago Today

Thursday December 19, 2024 7:00 pm PST by
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup. The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
iPhone 17 Slim Feature

'iPhone 17 Air' With 'Major' Design Changes and 19-Inch MacBook Detailed in New Report

Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie. The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...

Top Rated Comments

btrach144 Avatar
48 months ago

Finally Lidar has a purpose!
But for real, Lidar is actually really neat but man, the implementations so far have been underwhelming.

While Clips might be a fun way, I hope we see other implementations in other apps.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
48 months ago

Clips has so much potential, I wish Apple invested more into it. I am about to try this new version.

I learned here on MacRumors that this app was actually a side work, an unintended product or something developed by an intern, I find it to be entertaining for young people and quite able to produce nice videos.
I agree 100%. Clips is an app that shows one of the very few applications of AR: realtime previews of visual effects. Between the gyro and LiDAR, you can track 3D objects into a scene as you're recording it, and subjects in the shot can walk in front of them.

This would've been insane a decade ago, but it's just an afterthought in one of Apple's least-marketed apps.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Unregistered 4U Avatar
48 months ago

I thought this looked pretty neat in the M1 iPad Pro announcement. Now that I’ve had a chance to play around with it, it actually works better than I thought. I think Prism, Disco, and Dance Floor look the coolest.
I wish Dance Floor had some sort of beat detection in it. :)
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GeoStructural Avatar
48 months ago
Clips has so much potential, I wish Apple invested more into it. I am about to try this new version.

I learned here on MacRumors that this app was actually a side work, an unintended product or something developed by an intern, I find it to be entertaining for young people and quite able to produce nice videos.


I hope we see other implementations in other apps.
I agree with you. I can recommend "HELLO", "ARvid", and "in3D", but all of them are on the fun side of the spectrum, I haven't yet found that special app that makes good use of the LiDAR for precise measurement, realistic scanning and even professional use.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jimbobb24 Avatar
48 months ago
Finally Lidar has a purpose!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Unregistered 4U Avatar
48 months ago

But for real, Lidar is actually really neat but man, the implementations so far have been underwhelming.

While Clips might be a fun way, I hope we see other implementations in other apps.
Lidar is not very whelming to start with. I’ve seen some nice room capture apps and “place the furniture” apps, but, in most cases, the fact that they’re underwhelming is a part of working well. If the couch against the wall looks like… well, a couch against a wall… YOU DID IT YAAAY! :) If you’re a plane or car mechanic, maybe that could show something cool, but 1) Cool in this case would be just to highlight the part and 2) You’d have to be a mechanic to really see it as cool, I guess.

Most of the impressive displays of AR in the near term is almost guaranteed to be lighthearted/frivolous. Like in the mechanic thing above, a lighthearted yet impression version of that would be showing you all the parts of the engine, how it connects to the transmission and back out through the exhaust, etc.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)