Twitch added a way to crop a clip into a vertical, phone-friendly frame directly from their clip editor — useful if you're repurposing highlights for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Instagram Reels, all of which favor a tall 9:16 aspect ratio over the wide 16:9 landscape format a live stream is normally broadcast in.
Why vertical video matters now
Short-form vertical video has become the dominant format for how people discover clips outside of Twitch itself. A landscape clip squeezed or letterboxed into a vertical feed looks noticeably worse than one actually framed for it — small text becomes unreadable, and the most important part of the action can end up cropped out or too small to follow. Portrait mode exists specifically to solve that instead of leaving creators to crop clips by hand.
How it works on Twitch
When someone creates or edits a clip, Twitch's editor offers the option to reframe it vertically, tracking the action across the frame rather than just chopping the sides off blindly. This produces a second version of the clip alongside the original landscape one — both exist independently, and creating one doesn't replace or alter the other.
Downloading the portrait version
On Clip Samurai, resolve the clip as usual through the Single Clip tab. If a portrait crop exists, you'll see a separate "Portrait (9:16)" section in the quality list below the standard landscape options — download from there just like any other quality, same process, just a different aspect ratio.
Why some clips don't have one
The portrait crop tool is a relatively recent addition to Twitch's clip editor. Older clips, or ones nobody has specifically run through the vertical editor, simply won't have a portrait version available. There's no way to generate one after the fact from outside Twitch's own systems — it has to be created at clip-editing time using their tool, not reconstructed later.
What to do if there's no portrait version
If a clip you want doesn't have one and you still need vertical footage, downloading the landscape version and cropping it yourself in a basic video editor remains an option — you'll lose the automatic action-tracking Twitch's tool provides, but you retain full control over exactly what stays in frame.
Does Kick have anything similar?
Not currently — this is a Twitch-specific feature. For more on how the two platforms differ beyond this, see the Twitch vs Kick comparison.
Check if your clip has a portrait version
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