What Instagram’s Edits App Does.

The short answer

Edits is Meta’s standalone video editing app for making Short-form video on a phone, signed in with an Instagram account. It records, edits and exports Reels, with a teleprompter, templates, a timeline and feedback on what can affect how widely a video is shown. For a brand team that already makes Reels in house, its planning tools matter more than its effects.

What the Edits app is

Meta launched Edits on 22 April 2025 as a separate app from Instagram, built for making videos directly on a phone. You sign in with your Instagram account.

Meta’s launch announcement framed it as a dedicated space for the whole creation process, so you are not jumping between several apps and workarounds to finish one video. It also said it wanted to build creative tools for any platform, not only Instagram and Facebook.

On 22 April 2026, Meta marked one year of Edits with a post from its Head of Edits, Brett Westervelt, setting out what had been added and what comes next.

Recording and editing

The core of the app is a capture and editing tool. At launch Meta listed:

• camera capture of up to 10 minutes
• easy project management
• a frame-accurate timeline with editing at the level of each clip
• auto-enhance, and effects such as green screen and transitions
• sharing straight to Instagram and Facebook, or exporting to post anywhere else with no added watermark

That last point is worth knowing for a team that publishes the same video in more than one place. A clean export means no watermark is added to the file when it goes elsewhere.

The teleprompter

Meta added an in-app teleprompter, which the one-year post said came from creators finding it hard to read scripts from their notes while filming.

It works for both on-camera recording and voiceover, and you can change the text size and the scrolling speed as you go. For a brand team, that makes a scripted piece to camera easier to film with a member of staff rather than a trained presenter.

Templates you can take apart

Templates let you build a video quickly from popular music, eye-catching fonts, and clips timed to the beat of the track. Meta’s update of 17 December 2025 added the option to share your own templates for others to use.

The more useful change came in the one-year post. Tapping an Edits template now opens its project file, so you can see how it was made, including whether it uses trending audio, and then make it your own.

For a brand team, that turns a template from a shortcut into a lesson. You can see exactly how a format was cut before deciding whether it fits your account. If the template leans on trending audio, check first what music a business account can use on Instagram.

The Ideas tab and planning

The Ideas tab is where Edits stops being only an editor. According to Meta’s one-year post, it keeps the reels and audio you have saved on Instagram alongside sticky notes for your own ideas.

The same post describes an inspiration feed based on what you post, and ideas generated for you each week. The December 2025 update added storyboards, a place to map out scripts, teleprompter cues, clips and notes before you edit.

Put together, that is a rough planning layer sitting in the same app where the video is made. For a small in-house team, that can replace a loose collection of screenshots, notes apps and saved posts.

Insights on skips and comments

At launch, Meta said Edits would give real-time feedback on factors that can affect how widely a video is shown, such as skip rate. We have explained what Instagram skip rate and share rate mean in more detail.

The one-year post describes insights that summarise the comments on your videos. Meta said more insights about your followers are coming.

The comment summary is the feature we would watch most closely. Comments are where an audience tells you what it wants next, and a team that reads them properly makes better second and third videos.

Effects and newer features

Meta’s December 2025 update added several features aimed at making videos stand out:

• AI-powered video effects that can be applied to specific people or objects in a video
• Reels in Edits, which lets you pick a Reel from a public library to remix or react to, with the original creator credited
• title cards, ready-made styled titles for the start of a video
• a wider library of text styles, with more fonts for Indic languages

The one-year post also said captions are getting bilingual options, along with advanced colour adjustments and speed curves, and that Meta plans to make most of the tools customisable.

What Meta says is still coming

Some features are announced rather than shipped, and it is worth keeping the two apart when you plan around the app.

In its one-year post, Meta said it plans to let you pin favourite tools, start each project from a personalised setup, and use more complex templates with overlays, keyframes and video effects. At launch in 2025, it also said it was working on a way to share drafts with friends, other creators or brands for feedback.

We would not build a workflow around any of these until they appear in your own app.

Where Edits fits in a brand team’s workflow

The case for Edits is not that it replaces a professional editing setup. It is that it puts scripting, filming, editing and planning in one place for the videos a team makes quickly, on a phone, every week.

Imagine a brand team that films a weekly Reel with a member of staff. The script can live in a storyboard, the presenter reads it from the teleprompter, the edit happens on the same phone, and the comment summary feeds next week’s idea.

That is a system, not a tool. Where the video needs heavier work, such as multi-camera shoots or long-form footage cut down into clips, a dedicated video production and editing workflow still does the job better.

What to watch out for

A few cautions before you move a team onto Edits.

1. Templates make videos look alike. Use them to learn a format, then change it.
2. Generated weekly ideas are a prompt, not a plan. Check every one against what your account is for.
3. Features announced are not features shipped. Plan around what is in the app today.
4. Keep the approval step. A faster edit does not remove the need for someone to sign off what goes out.

How NBK thinks about Edits

We judge Edits on whether it improves the system behind a team’s Reels, not on how many effects it has.

Its strongest parts for brands are the least flashy ones: a teleprompter that makes presenters easier to film, templates you can open and learn from, and a summary of what your comments are saying. Each one removes friction from a weekly publishing rhythm.

If the app helps a team plan, film and review in one loop, it is worth adopting. If it just adds another place to lose drafts, it is not.

Next step

If your team is making Reels regularly but the process feels slow, a simple approval process template is a good place to tighten things up. NBK can help rebuild the workflow behind the content.