Google Photos might just be ready to compete with dedicated video editing apps

Soon after Google Photos rolled out Creations to make visual stories with your photos and videos a breeze, the tech giant is now doubling down on video editing.

As of right now, producing said videos is easy — you simply head to Google Photos’ Create tab and select ‘highlight video.’ Now, with what Google is introducing, the same workflow is gaining five new powerful features.

Let templates do the heavy lifting

Now rolling out on Android, Google Photos’ video editing templates are pre-set formats that are meant to make creating shareable videos a simpler process.

Complete with built-in music, text, and cuts synced to the soundtrack of your choice, you, as the user, only need to give the tool the photos and videos you want included.

Head to the Create tab and select ‘highlight video’ to get started. “Stay tuned for new templates,” suggests Google.

Redesigned video editor

Rolling out for both Android and iOS, Google Photos’ redesigned video editor finally offers a proper ‘universal timeline.’ If you’ve ever edited videos with a dedicated software on a desktop, you’d know what I’m talking about.

Not only does the new timeline offer an adaptive canvas for easier editing, it also supports multi-clip editing, essentially allowing you to arrange, trim, and edit multiple video clips and photos at once.

Slap the perfet track and text on

Rolling out to both Android and iOS, thanks to a deeper integration with the Photos music library, users can now browse through overlay tracks directly within the app’s editor.

And while music is important, text overlays, too, are essential for context. With the new update, users will now be able to layer captions, titles, and context markers as overlays, directly onto their highlight videos.

The new editor is now the default editor

Not limited to just highlights or multi-clip edits, the redesigned editor is now the default video editor for individual video clips too. This means that all the above-mentioned upgrades also apply to single clips that you open directly from your gallery.