Looking to recover old videos to rewatch projects but cannot find them anywhere

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Level 1

4 points

Looking to recover old videos to rewatch projects but cannot find them anywhere

I know this is a stupid thing to be asking but I opened my imovie app today by accident, I really was excited to watch these peojects from as old as 2019, but atlast only two out of more than 20 are still there, the rest of them imovie doesn’t have because it just uses whats in your icloud and guess what videos aren’t in my icloud… and as much as I would just like to let these go, some of these are over 30 minutes long and young me put a lot of time into those. My backups only show options for this year and the latest backup I would need is like 2021 of April because that was the last thing I used imovie for. I’m desperate to rewatch these, how do I find them?!

edit before anyone actually replies: I’m aware I could use third party softwares but i’m wondering if theres anything I could do before I have to go there, since I don’t really want to take that much of a risk?

iPhone 16 Pro Max

Posted on Jul 25, 2025 3:01 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Rich839

Level 8

48,156 points

Jul 25, 2025 8:00 AM in response to lib_lkc

Hi,

iMovie stores everything in the iMovie library. You can have several iMovie libraries. Possibly when you opened your iMovie app it opened in a library that contained only two of the projects. The remaining projects may be located in another library. Close iMovie and look in your Movies folder on your Mac (Go/Home/Movies). Double click on any libraries that you see in there. iMovie will open in that library. Then see if your projects then appear in the iMovie app.

-- Rich

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Answer 2

Rich839

Level 8

48,156 points

Jul 25, 2025 11:22 AM in response to lib_lkc

My mistake. I hadn't noticed that you were using iPhone iMovie rather than Mac iMovie. My previous response applied to Mac iMovie.

I'm not familiar enough with iPhone iMovie to fully address your question. I do know that iPhone iMovie stores the media for the iMovie projects in the Photos app on your phone. The projects themselves should appear in the iPhone iMovie app under Projects when you open the app. If they are not shown there I don't know where they would be. If you had shared out the projects as videos, the videos would be located at whatever destination that you selected when you exported them. Sigh in on iCloud.com to check if any videos are in there.

Hopefully someone on this forum who is experienced with iPhone iMovie will chime in here with more definitive information.

-- Rich

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Answer 3

lib_lkc Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 25, 2025 11:00 AM in response to Rich839

Hi Rich, I’ve only ever had Imovie on my phone, how would I find the different libraries there? All of the projects load with titles and icons its just most say they can’t find the videos to use

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