Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Instagram's new Edits app bundles idea capture, a 4K60 camera with teleprompter and green screen, and an AI editor with cutout, restyle, and auto-captions into one free app, closing most of the gap with CapCut-style editors.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You create Instagram Reels or TikToks on your phone and want one app that covers idea capture, filming, and editing instead of juggling three.
You've been paying for or fighting with a separate teleprompter app, a green-screen tool, and a video editor just to make one clip.
You're curious what free AI video tools — auto-captions, background removal, style filters — actually look like on a mainstream platform right now.

SKIP IF…

You edit long-form YouTube videos on a desktop — this is a phone-first, short-clip tool, not a Premiere or Resolve replacement.
You already have a locked editing workflow (CapCut, VN, etc.) and have no reason to switch apps.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Instagram quietly shipped a full mobile video app called Edits that goes well beyond captions and filters. It uses a five-tab structure — Ideas, Inspiration, Projects, Record, Analytics — that separates brainstorming from filming from editing. The camera records 4K at 60fps with a built-in resizable teleprompter, adjustable speed, and a real-time green screen that holds up without an actual backdrop. The editor adds trim/split, auto-captions, overlay b-roll, an AI Cutout tool that isolates a person or object from any clip after the fact, and AI Restyle filters that repaint footage while preserving the original movement. Export resolution is set independently, right before you save.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:44

01 · Cold open: what Edits promises

Justin frames Edits as more than a captions tool and previews Instagram's own pitch: 'make great videos, straight from your phone.'

00:44 – 01:16

02 · Instagram Edits App Interface

First look at the app's five-tab bottom bar, compared to DaVinci Resolve's page-based layout.

01:16 – 02:35

03 · Ideas & Inspiration tabs

The Ideas tab acts as a sticky-note board for text ideas, saved reels, audio, and collections; the Inspiration tab surfaces reels tailored to what you've watched and saved.

02:35 – 03:14

04 · Starting a new project

Choosing between importing existing footage/photos or shooting directly in-app; long-pressing a project duplicates it for safe experimentation.

03:14 – 04:40

05 · In-app camera settings

4K60 recording by default, adjustable resolution/frame rate, zoom controls, and a restrained beauty mode.

04:40 – 05:38

06 · The built-in teleprompter

A resizable, draggable teleprompter with adjustable scroll speed and text size, addable to any recording.

05:38 – 06:10

07 · The green screen effect

Real-time background removal that holds up even without a real green screen or solid backdrop.

06:10 – 07:39

08 · Adding music to your video

Picking music at record time from Instagram's library or importing licensed tracks from outside sources, then recording multiple clips back to back.

07:39 – 08:57

09 · Trim, split & add clips

Core timeline editing: trimming clip start/end, splitting and deleting sections, and pulling in more footage.

08:57 – 09:53

10 · Add, edit & customize text

Adding text layers, choosing presets, and repositioning/resizing text across the timeline.

09:53 – 10:40

11 · Automatic video captions

Generating auto-captions as editable text layers, with style changes applying across every caption clip.

10:40 – 11:35

12 · B-roll & overlay clips

Layering overlay photos/videos above the primary track while the original audio keeps playing underneath.

11:35 – 12:53

13 · The Cutout tool

Isolating a person or a manually-selected object from a photo or video clip, including tracking movement through a moving shot.

12:53 – 14:12

14 · Restyle AI filters

Applying AI style filters (Hawaii, Snow, Llama, 3D) that repaint footage in roughly 90 seconds while preserving the subject's motion.

14:12 – 14:44

15 · Voice enhancement

A noise-reduction slider for cleaning up wind and background noise in the recorded audio.

14:44 – 15:05

16 · Quality & export

Setting export resolution (4K/2K/HD) independently of the recording resolution before saving.

15:05 – 15:33

17 · Final thoughts

Verdict: Edits plays like CapCut did back when CapCut was still free — an easy, AI-loaded solution for everyday creators.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Instagram's Edits app records at 4K 60fps by default, higher quality than most creators expect from a native social app's camera.
The app includes a built-in teleprompter you can resize and drag anywhere on screen, a feature usually reserved for dedicated teleprompter apps.
Edits removes a green screen background in real time during recording, and the cutout held up even against a plain concrete wall with no actual backdrop.
A separate 'Cutout' tool can isolate a person or object from footage after the fact, tracking their movement through the whole clip without a green screen.
Auto-generated captions land as editable text layers, so restyling one caption applies the same look to every caption clip in the project at once.
Speed controls run from 0.3x slow motion to 3x fast-forward, adjustable at both record time and in the edit.
AI 'Restyle' filters (Hawaii, Snow, Llama, 3D, etc.) took about 90 seconds each to render and preserved the subject's actual movement rather than pasting on a static filter.
Voice enhancement includes an adjustable noise-reduction slider for stripping wind and background hiss without a separate app.
You can import your own licensed music instead of Instagram's built-in library — relevant for anyone who sources tracks from Epidemic Sound or Artlist to avoid copyright claims when reposting elsewhere.
The Ideas tab works like a sticky-note board for saving text ideas, reels, audio, and collections before a project ever starts.
Long-pressing a project duplicates it, letting you test AI filters or risky edits without touching the original cut.
Export resolution (4K, 2K, HD) is set independently from the recording resolution, adjusted right before you export.

Takeaway

What Instagram's free Edits app can actually do

APP WALKTHROUGH

Instagram's new Edits app packs a 4K60 camera with teleprompter and green screen, an AI-powered Cutout and Restyle editor, and auto-captions into one free app — closing most of the gap with dedicated tools like CapCut.

02Instagram Edits App Interface

Edits mirrors an NLE-style tab structure — Ideas, Inspiration, Projects, Record, Analytics — that separates brainstorming from filming from editing, similar to DaVinci Resolve's page-based layout.

03Ideas & Inspiration tabs

The Ideas tab works like a sticky-note board: save quick text ideas, saved reels, saved audio tracks, and reel collections before you ever start filming.
The Inspiration tab surfaces reels based on what you've watched and saved, functioning as a built-in trend feed inside the editor itself.

04Starting a new project

Long-pressing a project duplicates it, so you can test a risky edit or AI filter without touching the original cut.

05In-app camera settings

Edits records at 4K 60fps by default, well above what most creators expect from a native social app's camera, with resolution and frame rate independently adjustable.
Zoom, beauty mode, and flash are built in, with beauty mode deliberately understated rather than the over-smoothed look common in short-form camera apps.

06The built-in teleprompter

The built-in teleprompter is resizable and draggable anywhere on screen, with adjustable scroll speed and text size — a feature usually reserved for dedicated teleprompter apps.

07The green screen effect

The real-time green screen cutout held up even against a plain concrete wall with no proper backdrop, correctly isolating fine details like hair.

08Adding music to your video

You can pick music at record time from Instagram's library, or import your own licensed tracks — useful if you source music from Epidemic Sound or Artlist and need to avoid copyright claims when reposting elsewhere.
Multiple clips can be recorded back-to-back in one session, each landing as its own trimmable segment in the timeline.

09Trim, split & add clips

The core timeline supports trim, split, and delete on any clip, with a dedicated plus button to pull in more footage from the camera roll or a fresh recording.

10Add, edit & customize text

Text layers behave like a proper NLE: adjustable start/end time, drag-to-reposition, pinch-to-resize, and reusable style presets.

11Automatic video captions

Auto-generated captions land as editable text layers — restyling one caption applies the same look to every caption clip in the project.

12B-roll & overlay clips

Overlay clips sit on a separate track above the primary video and keep the underlying audio playing, so you can cut away visually without losing the voiceover.

13The Cutout tool

The Cutout tool isolates a person — or a manually-selected object — from a photo or video and drops it in as its own layer, effectively a green screen for footage that was never shot on green.
Cutout tracks movement across a video clip, not just a still frame, which is the harder technical problem most consumer apps skip.

14Restyle AI filters

AI Restyle filters (Hawaii, Snow, Llama, 3D, etc.) took about 90 seconds to render and preserved the subject's actual movement, not just a static filter overlay.

15Voice enhancement

Voice enhancement includes an adjustable noise-reduction slider for stripping wind and background hiss, addressing bad audio without a separate app.

16Quality & export

Export resolution is set independently right before export, so a 4K60 recording can still be downsampled to save file size.

17Final thoughts

The creator's verdict: Edits plays like CapCut did back when CapCut was still free — full-featured enough to replace a dedicated third-party editor for most everyday content.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Cutout: Edits' AI segmentation tool that isolates a person or object from a photo or video clip so it can be layered onto other footage — functioning like a green screen for clips that were never shot on green.
Restyle: An AI filter category in Edits that repaints an entire clip in a different visual style (an animal, a location, a 3D look) while keeping the subject's original movement intact.
Ideas tab: A built-in notes area in Edits for saving quick text ideas ('stickies'), reels, audio clips, and reel collections before starting a project.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:44toolDaVinci Resolve

06:40toolEpidemic Sound

06:40toolArtlist

07:45toolVN Video Editor

15:20toolCapCut

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

05:46

“That is probably one of the best cutouts that I have seen, and I am not on a solid background.”

surprising on-camera demo result, tight and specific→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

12:46

“This is something that really not many other tools have where you're able to do this afterwards.”

sets up the Cutout tool's differentiator in one line→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

15:20

“It's kind of where CapCut was back when it was free, an awesome solution for a lot of people to create videos easily.”

concise verdict anchored to a known benchmark app→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

Instagram recently rolled out its own dedicated video editing app, and it's actually pretty powerful. So in this video, we're gonna give you a complete step by step tutorial on exactly how to use the new Instagram edit app to create better videos faster. But you're also not just limited to creating Instagram videos with this too.

So quickly looking at their website and their promise for this, make great videos with edits. Easily turn your ideas into videos straight from your phone. Yes.

So this isn't just editing. This is a pretty cool video dumping ground and idea generation tool too. So it says here all the tools that you need in one app.

So obviously at this point, you wanna go ahead and download either the iOS or the Android version. Gonna I'm be showing you on an iPhone. The process is the same for both.

So this is what you see when you first open up the app. First off, if we have a look at the icons down the bottom, this is very similar to what you find in DaVinci Resolve where we've got these different steps in the video creation process all mapped out here. So the first one here, this is our ideas page.

We can then jump across to inspiration to help us come up with ideas, then through to our existing projects. You can see I've had a bit of a play around in here.

We've got that camera, then two, and then through to the analytics and how our posts are actually going. Let's just jump back to the beginning to the ideas page. So here we can add what they call stickies.

So if I hit the plus button here, this is if I've got a quick idea, we're out somewhere and we wanna save this. It's almost like the Apple Notes app that's built into the app here. So we'd add our idea here in here.

We can give it a title if we want, but we can hit add, and these show up here as sticky notes that we could have pages of these things that when we're looking to create content, we can pull directly from these. Now up the top, we've also access to our saved reels. So again, if we're saving reels as we're navigating through on Instagram as inspiration, we can quickly access those here.

Any audio tracks or music that were found from other people's reels and things too, we can save those that we can access again quickly. And we've got collections in here as well, which are like groups or collections, playlists really of different types of reels, again, that you're using here for inspiration. So this is kind of our brain dump area here.

So the next tab over though, the inspiration tab, this is where Instagram will show us some reels that it thinks we're gonna be interested in probably based on the stuff that we've already seen on Instagram, but probably more so the things that we've saved and have curated already at this point. So we can scroll through here and we can watch different reels and things again to gather inspiration for what we're about to create.

So let's jump across though to the project area here. Obviously, we can see all of our previous projects that we're creating. I love that if we long press on a project that we can easily duplicate it.

So if you wanna test different things out, you can see I've been playing with some of the AI filters and things in here. We can test some stuff without ruining a project that we might already be working on. But to start a new project, and this is where you wanna decide, am I gonna make a project based off something I've already shot on my phone or photos and things that I already have existing, in which case you'll hit the plus button here, you navigate through and you will select those things.

We're gonna hit cancel. The other option is that we shoot directly into the app. So we can jump across here to the record.

So I'm back on camera now. And I'm not sure if this comes through in the screen recording, but this is really smooth because the quality here, as I said, it was a high quality app.

You can see it's set here to four k 60 frames per second. So that's nice and smooth. There's no jitteriness in there.

So I love that you've got that option because most apps like this don't have that option. But we can actually change this too. So where it says four k 60, if we wanna create a lower quality, so an HD video or a two k quality video instead of four k, we can adjust it here.

We've also got your frame rates here. So the default normally is 30. So this one's personal preference, but personally, I like the way that, uh, the 60 frames per second looks so smooth.

So I would just leave it like this. This is very similar to what you've probably seen in other tools or apps. We can switch the camera here with this button here so we can flip it around.

You'll see my setup here, Come back to meet. We've got our zoom controls here, one, two, and five. No one wants to press five.

I'm not gonna press it. I'm not gonna scare you like that. Let's go back.

Next to that here, we have beauty mode, which is on by default. Yeah. Is it really doing much?

You're not getting rid of my eye wrinkles here. Well, okay. That's maybe a little bit worse.

Okay. I like that it's not so over the top. A lot of these beauty filters are just yeah.

Look pretty crazy. I'm gonna turn that off. And we've got our camera flash here too if we wanna have torch or light on the back, we can turn that on.

But over on the side here is where we've got some pretty cool options to again make it easy for you to create videos. I like that they've got a built in teleprompter here. So if I press on this, we can add our script so when we're talking to people, when we're presenting, we can actually be reading and having our notes or bullet points there.

And if we hit the little settings button for that here, then we can adjust the speed and the text size to really customize that up for you and for, I guess, the amount of text that you're gonna be reading or presenting. Now I know this is something that you could get a dedicated tool for a camera app that has a built in teleprompter, but a lot of them don't let you do this, but we can just pick it up, we can move it around, we can adjust the size of it here.

So I think that's pretty awesome. There's probably a few apps out there right now that had that functionality dedicated. That was the main reason people were using it.

Should be a little worried by now. So we'll turn off the teleprompter up from that. We've got the one times here.

This is the speed control. So we could record videos at three times speed or up to three times speed, or we can slow it down to 0.3 speed.

So we're recording in slow motion or fast motion here. Up from that here is the green screen effect. You can see I mean, that is probably one of the best cutouts that I have seen, and I am not on a solid background.

It's like a concrete texture wall. Let's go back over this way and see how it does with the green in the background. Yeah.

Okay. Not as good, but still like this hairline and stuff, pretty solid. I gotta send that back off.

But when we have this on, you can see then we can select our background up here under change background. We can then pick something again from our phone. Let's turn that off.

And then the top one here is music. This is where we can pick our music at the time of recording. Right?

So when we're recording, the music's gonna be in the background there for us. We can add all of this stuff later as well, and it's not something that I would normally do record with the music, but maybe if you're dancing or you're trying to match something up or you're miming a song or something, then obviously you want that here too.

So while this is showing you the Instagram music library here, you've also got access to import your own music tracks here too. So this is what you would want to do if you're getting your music from other places like we do from Epidemic Sound or from Artlist. So that way we know that we're not gonna have any copyright issues no matter where we post this.

So we hit continue and we'd go and find those songs or tracks. But let's come back out of this now. So for us to record, obviously, we've got the record button down the bottom here.

If I tap and hold on it, just like the regular app for Instagram, we can swipe up and down with my thumb on the screen there, or I can just press to start and press to stop the recording. So now that I've let go, we've now created a clip. It is down the bottom here, and we could then continue recording.

So maybe I'd change up the angle a little bit, and I'd be filming the next piece over here. We've got our count up timer here, which also shows us that we are recording. And when I let go, it's going to stop.

So we can see we've our two clips down the bottom there. We can remove one. So you can see they've got a little x there on top of them if we want to remove it.

Likewise, we can continue shooting to really build this out. Once we're done with this piece, we can then come across. We hit the little arrow down the bottom here.

So then we're taken to really what the core editing functionality is here in the edits app. This looks very similar to an app like VN Video Editor or CapCut. And apparently, this is something you're really going to be investing and building out over time.

But we can see already based on us recording in here or if we'd imported our photos or video clips, then we'd be seeing those in here. But we can see we still got those two separate clips here that we can pick up, we can move around. With it selected, we can adjust the start and end time.

So we can trim off the start, We could trim off the end. All very, simple. And we can even add splits or cuts.

Let's say that there was something we wanted to cut out about here, I could press the split button down the bottom, and we could then make adjustments to it here. So we could remove a chunk like that. So we've got a extra piece here, and we could press the delete button to remove it that way.

But you'll see along the bottom here, you've got a lot of different tools, a lot of different functionality in here, and this changes whether you have a clip selected like I do now, or if I deselect it just by tapping somewhere else on the screen, you'll see that these options change down here. Now for any time we wanna add extra clips, you can see it when come across here, there's a plus button on the end.

We can press on that and we can import something from our phones gallery or again, shoot some more stuff to add in here. So let's come back to the start.

Let's say we wanted to add some text into this. Let's press text down the bottom and we can just type out what we want. There we go, Justin Brown.

We can change what this looks like. There's a bunch of presets and stuff in here, or we can customize this up. We can change the colors, the fonts, all of that stuff.

Again, very similar to what you've probably used in other areas of Instagram before. Just pull this down out of the way and let's pick up this text. We can pinch to zoom to make it bigger.

We could even rotate it or do whatever we'd like with it here, but let's put it down here. And then you'll see here in the timeline, we have this as its own text layer now. Again, as you would in other editing tools where we could adjust the start time, adjust the end time, pick it up, move it around to build out the story that we want.

We have the ability to add voiceovers and stuff in here as well. So down the bottom, I've got voice, and we can just hit record and add one of those directly in here.

Now I don't remember what I said in this recording here, but we can easily add captions with the CC button down the bottom. It's going through and it's generating captions for us. Here we go.

So those are in here now. We can resize it, customize them up. So we've got those in there now and we can see them all here as separate text layers here in our timeline.

But let's say we wanna make some adjustments to this, we can select one and we can pick it up, we can move it around, maybe we want the text at the top for this one, and maybe we'll make it a little bit bigger. Let's just pinch to zoom on that. That actually will be applied to all of the clips here.

So you can see that these other clips across the top here that it's been applied to those as well. But down the bottom here, when we have one of these captions selected, you can see that we can edit this to change the look of these two. Let's go back out of this.

Now let's deselect that. Now let's say that we wanted to bring in some overlay clips or some b roll on here. Then we come down the bottom to overlay.

We can either choose a photo or a video. Here's me playing around here with again some of the AI stuff in here, which I'll show you very soon. Here is a clip, and you can see it's actually on top of our regular video.

I can pick this up, I can move it around, I could make it full screen if I wanted to. So while this is actually playing, it's still playing my video underneath, and you'll still hear that audio.

But for this section here, I am some sort of maybe Greek god. Who knows? But with these b roll or overlay clips, we've got a lot of the same settings that we do with our regular clips.

So we could split it at this point, maybe we delete this second half of it. We've got all our filters and adjustments and volume controls and all of that stuff for these clips too, which is awesome. Now speaking of effects, there are so many built in here.

There's a cool one that you really don't see too often cut out, which is down the bottom here. Let's press on this. It's then gonna say pick a video file or an image.

Maybe we'll pick this one here. It's then gonna go ahead and you can choose what you wanna cut out of that. So it selected me in this case, obvious choice, we choose done.

And we've now got this as a cutout that we can pick up and we can move around and easily add into our video. And you can see down the bottom here, it's added as its own track. But the cool part is is that you can actually do that with video as well.

So let's choose cut out again. Maybe I'll pick this clip here. So again, it's automatically found me.

Now this doesn't need to be a person. We could actually switch this and choose select manually and pick the lamp in the background if we wanted. But let's do this because it's gonna track the movement of me in this video.

You can see it's going through. It's processing that now. I mean, it's not a lot of movement, but there is some, and we choose done.

And again, is its own little clip that we can have in here. So this is something that really not many other tools have where you're able to do this afterwards. Adding a green screen effect in at the time of recording is pretty common, but not to add that green screen background removal and have it work as well as this, like even the finger movement here, Like, that's pretty awesome to have that built in to this and to it's just quick.

Okay. As for other effects, let's come down the bottom here. Let's select our primary footage.

We have the option here to restyle, and there's so many different AI filters that you can add on here. So we see if you scroll down, there's lots to choose from.

I mean, the chicken looks pretty funny. But then there's also these categories across the top where we can find even more. Let's go characters and let's go to llama restyle.

And that wasn't too quick. It probably took about a minute and a half to generate this. Let's have a quick play.

Obviously, we've got a lot going on in this now. Okay. Pretty solid.

The movement and everything. Yeah. That's pretty cool.

That's exactly what I did. This was another one of those filters here to test that out too. So that's the restyle feature, but you can also just make your regular color adjustments.

You got a lot of the regular sort of tools here, brightness, exposure, contrast, all of that stuff. You've also got a lot of filters in here, Instagram filters that you can apply. So obviously, if you were looking to color adjust or change the feel or the vibe of your videos, then you can apply these too.

There's also a dedicated area here for effects. So if we open that up, then there's different zoom effects, blur effects, and there's a camera shake one here. And straight away by tapping on it, it gives us a preview of it.

Our handheld look, fade in. Yeah.

If you scroll down, there's lots of different ones that we can apply. Now there's also some cool audio stuff in here as well. So if we select our clip, you can see down the bottom, we've got voice enhancement.

This will help remove the background noise and to slide it here as to how much we wanna reduce the noise. So if you're filming in a windy environment or even if your microphone's not that good, then this can help make this sound so much better. And obviously remove the wind and background noise and stuff too.

But you've also got a lot of the common stuff that you would find, like being able to mirror or flip your video. We've also got our speed controls in here as well if you wanna speed up or slow down our video. Now at any time, you can actually change the quality of this video as well.

You'd normally do this right before you export, but where it says four k at the top, we can choose what quality, what resolution do we actually wanna save this out as. So again, my settings are four k 60 frames per second here. So I'm gonna leave it as that.

Then to save it out, I just wanna hit export in the top right hand corner, and that's gonna happen for us. But overall, I think it's a pretty powerful app. There's lots of AI stuff built in.

It's really easy to use. It's kind of where CapCut was back when it was free, an awesome solution for a lot of people to create videos easily. Well played Instagram or Meta.

Now if you wanna geek out even further with AI tools for video editing, check out the videos that are linked on screen. As always, we've got a bunch of other resources and links in the description box below to help help you even further, and I will see you in the next video. Cheers.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Instagram's new Edits app is easy to mistake for a captions-and-filters add-on, but it's a full idea-to-export pipeline — sticky-note brainstorming, a 4K60 camera with teleprompter and green screen, and an AI editor with a person/object cutout tool and movement-preserving style filters, all in one free app.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

00:44list

Edits' five-tab structure

Ideas
Inspiration
Projects
Record
Analytics

Edits separates the creative process into distinct stages — capturing ideas, gathering references, managing projects, filming, and reviewing performance — instead of dropping straight into a timeline.

Steal forany app onboarding flow that wants to separate brainstorming from production

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

15:20next-video

“if you wanna geek out even further with AI tools for video editing, check out the videos that are linked on screen... a bunch of other resources and links in the description box below”

soft cross-promotion at the very end, after a full value-first walkthrough — no mid-video hard sell

FROM THE DESCRIPTION

AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.