How to shrink videos for sharing on Mac

What this does

Video files can be enormous, often too large to email, message, or upload quickly. This is the video version of the “resize photos for sharing” rule: it converts every incoming video to a smaller HEVC copy, which keeps quality high while cutting the file size down considerably, and keeps your original video sitting right alongside it, completely untouched.

What you’ll build

A rule that matches any video, then converts it to a smaller HEVC copy while keeping the original.

Open the rule editor

This walkthrough happens inside FilesAutomator itself, so install it from the Mac App Store first if you have not already, then open it. In its toolbar, choose Add, then New Automation Rule.

Name the rule and choose a folder

Name it something like “Shrink my videos for sharing” and use Add Folder to choose the folder your videos land in.

Build the condition

Add a single condition: Kind is a kind of public.movie, which matches every video format.

FilesAutomator

Add the action steps

Step 1: Convert video

Choose Add Step, then Convert video. Set “Convert to” to Smaller file (HEVC).

Set “Keep the original file as” to Left untouched, new file created separately, and “Mark the new file as” to “smaller”, so the two versions are easy to tell apart.

FilesAutomator

Turn it on

Select Create Automation Rule, then switch the rule on. Every video dropped here now gets a smaller, ready to share copy automatically, and the conversion is undoable from Activity.

A faster way

The template gallery inside FilesAutomator already has this rule ready to install, named Shrink videos for sharing.