The Best Mobile Video Editing Apps for 2024

Adobe's mobile video editing app for Android and iOS, Rush, is well designed. You can use it to edit videos entirely from a mobile device, or you can sync projects to your Creative Cloud account and finish them up on the desktop using Premiere Pro or the Mac or Windows version of Rush. You can shoot video in the app either in simple mode or advanced mode, which lets you manually set aperture and focus. Once you have some content, you can add titles, soundtracks, and graphics overlays. For vertical output, like for TikTok, an Auto Reframe feature finds the active area of a landscape shots and crops it accordingly. The standard adjustments for lighting and color are at your disposal, and you can add track overlays and speed changes. One thing you won't find are project templates like those offered by other apps. After rendering a project, you can export it directly to Behance, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Rush is now included with Adobe Express.

Platforms: Android and iOS

iMovie was among the first truly functional mobile video editors. The way it handles timelines was a major innovation upon its release because it lets you scroll the track with your finger rather than moving an insertion point cursor like you have to do on desktop video editors. The app lets you manage standard video joining and trimming, as well as tackling more advanced video editing, like green-screen compositing and speed altering. One of our favorite iMovie features, Trailers templates, has something called Storyboard movies, which shows you exactly what kind of shots to insert to create a compelling video. Another great features is Magic Movie, which automatically trims clips and adds titles, transitions, and background music. A big plus is you can continue editing projects on a desktop Mac in iMovie or Final Cut Pro.

Platforms: iOS

Canva targets small business owners, entrepreneurs, and influencers who want to up their social media game. This app is completely template-based and loaded with stock content so that you don't have to worry about being a pro editor to make your videos or graphics look professional. In fact, you can make an entire video without needing a single shot of your own. Or you can use your own video clips and photos to do some fancy editing with them, like stacking multiple videos in a vertical layout or using overlays that you can crop. The app has basic video editing features like slider bars to change the brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. You can think of Canva as being like the video equivalent of a lightweight graphics design application, with tools for adding and editing text, shapes, and borders. It's available for free, but many of its features, stock content, and templates require a Pro subscription (starting at $119.99 per person per year), which adds collaboration features for design teams.

Platforms: Android, iOS, and web

This well-designed and feature-full free app, owned by TikTok creator ByteDance, makes short work of creating shareable videos, thanks to its ShortCut option. With CapCut, you select clips and photos, and the app adds background music and effects. It added a video shake effect and flame overlays to one test video, though it was a bit slow, taking a couple minutes to render 30 seconds worth of clips on a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. You can split clips, add text, remove backgrounds from shots with people, and even use overlays with transparency. An impressive recent update added motion tracking, face and body effects reminiscent of Snapchat's, and transitions for overlays. When you’re done editing, the suggested place to share your work is—you guessed it—TikTok.

Platforms: Android and iOS

Just like its desktop counterpart PowerDirector 365, the mobile version of PowerDirector is loaded with editing tools, templates, transitions, and effects. You can create projects in vertical or horizontal aspects, and you can add titles and soundtracks. Subscribers have access to stock footage from Shutterstock, Getty iStock, and Pixabay. You get nearly all the same tools that come on the desktop program, including overlays with transparency, chroma keying, animated text titles, and even effect keyframing. Particularly useful for mobile use is the Fit & Fill tool, which makes reformatting horizontal content to vertical, and vice versa, a snap. PowerDirector also has auto-captioning, adjustment effect layers, and advanced crop tool, as well as templates for business social posts, vlogs, and Instagram videos. You can use the app for free, though to get extra goodies and remove the watermark, you need to pay for a (frequently discounted) subscription.

Platforms: Android and iOS

You don't have to own a GoPro to use this nifty app, but if you do have one, GoPro Quik brings even more to the table. Standout capabilities include automatic highlight video creation and a Mural feature that lets you gather your most beloved media and save it to the cloud. You get 14 themes that add titles and music to your creations. When you want to get more hands-on with your projects, Quik has plenty of editing tools like Exposure, Contrast, Vibrance, Temp, Shadows, and Highlights. You get dozens of filters as well as speedup and slowdown effects. A subscription is required for most functions aside from using auto-edits. Note that it's a large (for mobile) download at 120MB and that it didn't support HEIC photo files in testing.

Platforms: Android and iOS

InShot is a fun app that lets you produce not only video compilations but also collages and photo edits. When you start, simple help tips show you how to split and trim clips, zoom in on the timeline, and swap clip positions. One of InShot's strengths is that it gives you a number of stickers to overlay on your videos, in addition to text. It also lets you easily position your overlays either by dragging the item around with a finger. Picture-in-picture, masking, cropping, and speed changing—including one-click freeze frame—are all at your disposal, as are a generous helping of transition styles. Surprisingly, the app even offers keyframe editing, which lets you animate effects. Background music is available to add from a decent library of stock, but there’s no image stock. The app is free with ads and watermarks on your final creations. You can remove ads and watermarks and get more effects and stickers for $3.99 per month, $14.99 per year, or $34.99 for forever.

Platforms: Android and iOS

KineMaster lets you not only edit your own videos, but also download other people's projects to remix them. Start with either horizontal or vertical aspect ratios and then apply standard video edits like trim, split, overlays, transitions, and effects. You can reverse or change the speed of videos as well as add rotation, panning, and zooming. Text options include a good selection of fonts, and you can apply animations, too. KineMaster comes with color filters, chroma-keying, and a surprising choice of audio effects and soundtrack option. It's pretty much a full desktop video editing package that runs on the phone in an interface that doesn't feel cramped. A new background remover is similar to Apple's touted subject cutout feature in iOS 16. The free version of the app watermarks your work, but for $44.99 annually you get premium assets and no watermarks.

Platforms: Android and iOS

Splice has just about the slickest interface of any mobile video editing app, with a clear workflow and all the tools you could want. You can easily create picture-in-picture overlays (with transparency), chroma keys, masks, and speed changes. The app supports HDR output. Nifty transitions are at your disposal, as well as glitch and vintage effects and tons of text styles. You don’t get quite as much stock content or objects to overlay as you do in PowerDirector’s mobile app, though Splice's music library is excellent. The price is on the steep, side however, starting at $4.99 per week, $14.99 per month, or $99.99 per year.

Platforms: Android and iOS

Wondershare makes Filmora desktop video editing software for macOS and Windows as well as this full-featured freemium mobile app for Android and iOS. With Filmora, you can shoot video with your smartphone, use a template, or start from scratch. It comes with text-to-video AI content generation—although the app doesn't generate AI videos but rather creates text and adds relevant stock footage to a mini movie. When you choose a template, everything is done for you as long as you add the specified number of photos or video clips. The full editor is powerful, with tooltips like Make This Video Cooler, which takes you to the bountiful transition options. Loads of effects, stickers, and background music tracks come with the app, and a Voiceover button makes narration simple. The free version applies a watermark and limits you to 720p resolution, which is all right for phone viewing. The Pro upgrade removes those constraints and adds more effects and content for $29.99 for Android users and $34.99 for iOS users. A free three-day trial lets you test the Pro waters.

Platforms: Android and iOS

YouCut is a clear, capable, and affordable video editing app for Android and iOS. The app is surprisingly powerful. In addition to the standard clip joining, trimming and splitting, you get cool effects, filters, transitions, PiP, background music, speedup/slowdown, and text overlays. You get quite a bit of this for free, and the app doesn't watermark your creations the way many free video editors do, but it is ad-supported. For just $7.99 per year or $19.99 one-time purchase, you get a whole lot more filters and effects. There's even a tool to generate custom backgrounds to turn a horizontal shot to square or vertical. Save the file to the phone's local storage setting a resolution up to 4K, frame rate, and quality level using sliders, and then share to any social app installed.

Platforms: Android and iOS