(Credit: Cavan Images/Getty Images)
UPDATE 4/22: Edits is now available on the App Store and Google Play, offering "an app that truly meets the needs of short-form video creation," Meta says. Like Threads, you'll sign in with your Instagram account.
Upcoming features include: Keyframes to pinpoint exact moments to animate the position, rotation, and scale of your clips; Modify to quickly change the look and feel of your videos with AI; Collaboration to share drafts with friends, other creators, or brands for feedback and creative builds; and more fonts, text animations, transitions, voice effects, filters, sound effects and music options, including some that are royalty-free.
Rival CapCut, meanwhile, returned to app stores in February alongside TikTok, but still faces an uncertain future in the US.
Original Story 1/19:
Meta is taking advantage of ByteDance's CapCut being pulled from US app stores this weekend by teasing its own video-editing app, dubbed Edits.
Edits is "hoping not just to be an editing tool but an entire full suite of creative tools for those of you who are passionate about making videos on your phone," Instagram Head Adam Mosseri said in a Sunday afternoon video. "It's not for people using desktop apps, it's not for people looking for templates. It's for people who use their phone to make short-form videos."
(Credit: PCMag/Meta)That probably sounds familiar. Mosseri's announcement comes shortly after Google and Apple pulled ByteDance apps from the Play Store and App Store, respectively, to comply with a law that required ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US company by Jan. 19. With no sale announced, Google and Apple risked fines of $5,000 per user, so the apps were removed today.
TikTok is the most well-known ByteDance app, but it also owns CapCut, a "free video editing app lets you create surprisingly robust little movies on your mobile device," we said in our review.
ByteDance has revived the TikTok app, ostensibly because of a vague promise from Donald Trump to "make a deal to protect our national security." But CapCut and other ByteDance properties are still down as of this writing. And none are back in the app stores.
Mosseri didn't directly address the TikTok drama, saying only that "there's a lot going on in the world right now." He added: "No matter what happens, we think it's our job to create the most compelling creative tools for those of you who make videos for not just Instagram but for platforms out there, as we can."
He teased a few features coming to Edits, including a dedicated tab for inspiration and trending audio, a tab for keeping track of ideas, a higher-quality camera, and the ability to share drafts with friends and other creators. Meta will also provide stats for clips shared on Reels.
Edits will support videos up to 10 minutes in length, and there's AI, of course. "Bring images to life with AI animation," the app description says.
For now, you can only preorder Edits on the App Store, with Android coming soon. "The app won’t be available to download till next month, and in the meantime we’re going to work with a handful of video creators to get their feedback and improve the experience," according to Mosseri, who cautions that the "first version is going to be incomplete, so please be patient."