Instagram head Adam Mosseri took Topics Sunday with yet another announcement this weekend, the timing of which surely had nothing to do with the (brief) demise of TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps: a new free video editing app called Edits is on the way . Instagram’s changes will be aimed at people who edit videos on their phones and will offer “a full suite of creative tools.” This includes higher quality recordings, shareable drafts, audio trends, insights into how your Reels are performing, and an “inspiration tab,” in addition to the usual editing tools.
If all this reminds you of CapCut, TikTok’s sister app for video editing, you’re not alone. In answer To immediate comparisons, Mosseri called Edits “CapCut, but more for creators than casual videographers.”
The changes aren’t available yet, but you can pre-order them on the App Store if you’re an iOS user, and Mosseri says an Android version is “coming soon.” While it suggests the release in February, the App Store page indicates March 13. And don’t expect anything too polished when it arrives. “The first version is going to be incomplete, so please be patient, but I’m really excited to get it in your hands,” Mosseri said.
The announcement came shortly after TikTok announced its app would return online in the United States, just about 12 hours after it shut down. CapCut hasn’t returned yet, but it’s expected to follow suit. Trump said on social media that he would announce an executive order after he is sworn in, which would extend ByteDance’s time to sort out TikTok’s future.
While Threads users called Instagram to find out the timing of the announcement, Mosseri said the app has been in development for months, “and I think it will end up being quite different from CapCut.” Regarding this, he said: “Changes will have a much wider range of creative tools and probably a smaller addressable audience. Think of a place to track all your ideas instead of templates. Consider per-clip or per-video AI video editing tools. Think of new ideas for why your videos are successful or struggling.
It looks like the changes are at least a step ahead of CapCut, as the App Store page states that videos won’t have a watermark when exported. While the free version of CapCut has long added the easily removable end logo to videos at export time, it recently started adding a corner watermark as well.
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