Instagram’s new Edits app looks a lot like TikTok’s CapCut

Article by Daniel Konstantinovic | Jan 21, 2025

The news: Instagram is rolling out a number of changes that bring the app’s features closer to TikTok’s, as the ByteDance-owned short-form video app faces an uncertain legal future in the US.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the company will launch a secondary app on March 15 called Edits. Creators can use it to edit videos for Reels, with the ability to instantly share them to Instagram or export for use on any platform. Edits is noticeably similar to CapCut, a TikTok-owned video editing app.
Additionally, Instagram is changing its profile layouts to display images as rectangles rather than squares, a significant change that also mirrors TikTok’s profiles.

Why this matters: TikTok’s brief outage over the weekend did not create the void that competitors like Meta and YouTube may have hoped for, but it is still unavailable on US app stores, leading to uncertainty around its reliability for both creators and advertisers. Offering new features for creators allows Instagram to capitalize on TikTok’s troubles and fleshes out its service.

Though Reels may have started as an attempt to mimic TikTok’s success, it has since propelled Instagram to become the largest social ad business in the US, per our recent forecast. By launching video creation and editing services like Edits, Instagram can entice users to generate even more content and attract more creators to its platform.
While the similarities to CapCut have drawn criticism, Instagram is playing into its strength as the preferred TikTok alternative for many creators. In a December 2024 creator survey from Fohr, 68.7% of respondents said they viewed Instagram as the best alternative for increasing an audience.

Our take: Though President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to extend TikTok’s sale deadline by 75 days, its legal status is still uncertain. In the meantime, Instagram is set to be the most significant beneficiary of its struggles.

But even if a TikTok ban wasn’t on the table, copying it has worked well; Reels has helped its ad business boom, and offering easier content creation will help increase output.