Questions, answered plainly.

Free to try: download it and make 3 shorts, plus your tutorial short, no card and no account. After that, search and review stay open, and rendering needs a license, paid once: $49 as one of the first 1,000 Believers, then $99 for Standard.

Apple silicon (M1 or later), 16 GB of memory, macOS 15 Sequoia or later.

The app itself is small. On first run it downloads what it needs to work on your Mac, about 5 GB, once.

About 10 minutes, once, while VideoGhost sets itself up. Then a short tutorial takes one photo of you with your webcam and walks you through your first short. Your library fills in behind it: Favorites is searchable in about 30 seconds, and a library of 28,000 photos in under half an hour on an M1 MacBook Air.

Yes, including "Optimize Mac Storage" libraries. It fetches a full-size original only after you pick it.

No. Photos, video, your voice and faces never leave your Mac. Transcription, search and rendering all run on it. If you leave Share transcripts and edits on, the app sends what you say, search and change in each short, with tagged names, emails, phone numbers and addresses removed on your Mac first. Turn it off in Settings › Help Improve VideoGhost and what was sent is deleted.

Yes. Your VideoGhost library on your Mac is encrypted with a key kept in your Mac's Keychain: the photo index, people and faces, transcripts, projects, copies of your videos, your recordings and voice audio, and the photos used in your projects. Other apps can't read it. Finished shorts are saved as normal videos to your Photos, since they're what you share. Uninstalling VideoGhost removes the key too. There's no recovery key: if the Keychain key is ever lost, VideoGhost simply indexes again. Nothing in your Photos is touched.

Once, to finish setting up and to activate your license. After that you can turn off Wi-Fi and edit, search and render as usual.

Two switches, both on by default and both in Settings › Help Improve VideoGhost. Share anonymous usage stats: speed, errors, your Mac model and roughly how big your library is. Share transcripts and edits: what you say, search and change in each short, with tagged names, emails, phone numbers and addresses removed first. Both use a random ID, never your name or email. Also update checks, and, only if you turn on publishing, the shorts you choose to post.

Never. It doesn't edit or delete anything. Finished shorts go into a VideoGhost album.

Choose Uninstall VideoGhost in the app menu or in Settings. It removes the app and its data and resets the permissions you gave it. Your free trial count stays.

Yes, with your Mac's camera and mic. Or pick any video already in Photos.

VideoGhost does the first pass: it underlines the moments that could use a photo and writes a search for each. You get the final say. Keep a suggestion, drop it, or drag across any words to add your own. Nothing gets a photo unless you keep it.

Yes. Each spot shows up to 12 photos from your library. Pick another, or edit the search in your own words and look again.

Yes. Type @ in any photo search: "@mom" lists the people VideoGhost recognizes, "@lisbon" the places in your library. Pick one and the search keeps to those photos.

Yes. Mark someone "never show" and they won't appear in a cutaway again.

With a license, only if you leave it on: a short "Made with VideoGhost" card plays after the last frame. It's on by default, and you choose when you start each project. It lasts one second. Free trial shorts always have it.

If you want. Connect your own Zernio publishing account, pick a weekly schedule, and queue shorts to YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels. VideoGhost drafts a title, caption and hashtags for you to edit first. Everything else in the app works offline.

Suggestions only: a headline for the start of your short, a title, caption and hashtags for posting, and ideas for where photos could go. You review, edit or rewrite all of it, and nothing is posted until you choose to. VideoGhost checks its own suggestions for sexually explicit language and slurs before you see them.

No. It edits your own video with photos from your own library and generates no images, video or audio. Captions are your own words, transcribed. It never swaps or alters faces.

Yes. No explicit, hateful, harassing or deceptive content, and nothing you don't have the rights to. You're responsible for what you post, and breaking these rules can end your license. The full list is in our Acceptable Use Policy at getvideoghost.com/acceptable-use.

Pick a license on the pricing page and pay through Creem, our checkout. Your license key arrives by email right away, with how to activate it.

Open VideoGhost and choose Settings › License › Activate License… (Settings is ⌘,). Paste the key from your receipt email and press Activate. It works on up to 3 Macs at a time and offline after that. During the free trial, Activate License… also sits next to the Render button. If it says the key is already in use on 3 Macs, deactivate one of them first (Settings › License › Manage License… › Deactivate on This Mac).

Search your email for the Creem receipt, or email support@getvideoghost.com from the address you bought with and we'll resend it. The address is also in the app, under Settings › Support.

No. You buy a license once and keep it. Updates are included for a year, or for life as a Believer.

On the pricing page, choose Renew (or Reactivate if your updates lapsed a while ago), paste the license key you already own, and check out. The new year of updates goes onto that same key. Believers never need to renew.

Nothing breaks. The app tells you your update year has ended, and every version released while your updates were active keeps working, forever, with unlimited renders. Renew whenever you want the newest one.

One license works on up to 3 Macs at a time, and each user account on a Mac counts as one. To move it, open Settings › License › Manage License… on the old Mac and choose Deactivate on This Mac, then activate it on the new one. If you can't reach the old Mac, email support@getvideoghost.com.

If you have rendered fewer than three shorts with a paid license, you can have your money back. Just email us.

Creem, our reseller and merchant of record, handles checkout, tax and receipts.

Yes. VideoGhost for iPhone is on the App Store. Record or pick a take, cut it, mark the moments and pick photos from your own library, all on your phone. It needs iOS 26 or later.

It starts with a free 7-day trial, then it's a subscription through the App Store, where you'll see the price for your country. It isn't available in the EU or China.

No, they're bought separately. The Mac app is a license you buy once here; the iPhone app is a subscription through Apple.

No. Photos, video, your voice and faces stay on your iPhone, and search runs on it. If you let VideoGhost draft a short, only the words you said and a short text summary of your library go to our server, which keeps nothing.

Yes. Choose Continue on Mac in a short's ⋯ menu. On your Mac, turn on Settings › Your iPhone › Receive projects from your iPhone, and the project opens in the Studio. It travels through your own iCloud, never our servers.

In the Settings app on your iPhone: tap your name, then Subscriptions, then VideoGhost, then Cancel Subscription. You keep access until the end of the period you paid for.