Instagram announced on Thursday, November 5, 2026, that its short-form video editing app, Edits, is now available on desktop for Mac. The desktop version is designed to handle more complex video-editing projects that benefit from a larger screen, mouse, and keyboard.
The launch puts Edits in more direct competition with ByteDance’s CapCut, the video-editing tool Meta sought to challenge when it introduced Edits last year. CapCut has been available on desktop for Windows and Mac since 2021 and is widely used among creators.
The desktop app includes licensed and royalty-free music, sound and video effects, and automatic captions in multiple languages. It also features a full multi-track timeline, keyframes for transitions, audio waveforms for precise cuts, and support for importing custom font files. Audio and text styles saved on the mobile app sync to the desktop version, and users can customize keyboard shortcuts or import them from other editing software.
“A lot of creators have described the same moment to us: a project gets too big for your phone,” said Brett Westervelt, head of Edits, in a blog post. “Your work is growing, and your tools should grow with it.”
Creators can publish directly to Instagram from the desktop editor, with native features such as tagging and location built in. Instagram says this removes the need to edit on desktop, download the file, transfer it to mobile, and make further edits before posting. The app also supports horizontal and vertical video formats, with watermark-free exports in 4K resolution.
Instagram plans to ship weekly updates to the desktop editor and says it is working toward enabling seamless editing of a single project across both desktop and mobile. The company also said it will continue developing the mobile Edits app, which currently has more than 50 million users.
Source: TechCrunch