What a year of Edits changed, and what is coming next

Edits has shipped over 130 new features in a year, with weekly updates. That number is easy to read as noise, but a weekly release rhythm changes something real for a creator: the editor you learned three months ago is not the one on your phone now.

We have been editing our own reels in it since the start, so here is what we think actually changed, and the parts of the next year worth planning around.

What changed the work, not just the app?

Three things, and none of them is a filter.

• The teleprompter. Reading a script while filming turned a two-hour shoot into a twenty-minute one for anyone who talks to camera.
• Captions that keep up, with bilingual upgrades named as coming, which matters if your audience does not all think in one language.
• A weekly cadence. Something you could not do last month may simply be there now, which is a strange habit to build but a useful one.

We would add a fourth that is less a feature than a consequence: editing moved fully onto the phone. Not as a compromise, but as the place the work happens.

The weekly rhythm has one cost worth naming. A tutorial written three months ago may describe a menu that has moved, which is why we stopped bookmarking walkthroughs and started opening the app to check. If something is missing where you expect it, it is more likely to have been moved than removed.

Is a teleprompter cheating?

We hear this more than any other question about it, and no. What a teleprompter removes is the part nobody wanted: the fifteenth take, the lost thread, the pause while you remember the second reason. It does not write the script and it does not make you interesting.

You can adjust text size and speed while you are recording, which is the detail that decides whether it reads naturally. Too fast and your eyes chase the line. We set the speed slower than feels right and leave the text large, then talk slightly over it rather than exactly with it.

What is coming in year two?

• Advanced colour adjustments and speed curves, which are the two things people currently open a desktop editor for.
• Customisable tools, including pinning your favourites, so the five taps you make every time become one.
• More insight about your followers, inside the editor rather than in a separate app.
• Starting a project with your setup ready to go, which quietly matters most if you post daily.

Speed curves are the one we are waiting for. A cut that ramps rather than jumps is the difference between an edit that reads as made and one that reads as assembled, and it is currently the clearest tell between a phone edit and a desk one.

Follower insight inside the editor is the sleeper on that list. Most creators check their numbers in one app and make decisions in another, hours apart, which is how a reel gets edited to a hunch. Putting the two in one place will not make anyone a better editor, but it should shorten the distance between noticing something and acting on it.

Our own shortlist for the year is short: pinned tools first, because we reach for the same four on every reel, then speed curves, because they are the one thing we still miss from a desktop timeline. Everything else we will meet when we meet it.

Should you learn every new feature?

No, and we would argue against trying. A weekly release schedule rewards people who keep one workflow and adopt a feature only when it removes a step they actually take.

Our own test is simple: does this save time on the reel we are making today? Pinned tools will, because we reach for the same four. A new transition might not, because we already have one that works and consistency is worth more than novelty on a profile people scroll quickly.

A hundred new features is only useful if you ignore ninety of them on purpose.

Whatever you edit it with, the comments arrive in the same place, and Instoly can answer each one with the link while you are still in the timeline.