How to Edit Videos in the Google Photos App for Android
Android users can finally access the redesigned Google Photos video editor and its over 30 new editing tools. The new features were announced back in February, they were launched first on iOS, and from today they are launching for Android users.
Unlike some of the other recent updates to Google Photos features, the new video editor is available for free – no Google One subscription required. It is also available for both Pixel and non-Pixel Android devices. It is being deployed via a server-side update and should be available for most users soon, but may take longer on some devices.
To get started with these new tools, open the video in Google Photos, then click the Edit icon at the bottom of the screen to load the in-app editor.
In the new interface, the available editing tools are divided into four categories, selectable from the bottom menu:
- Video: Crop video to length, mute, apply stabilization, and export individual frames as image files.
- Cropping: Includes cropping, rotating, and horizontal adjustment tools.
- Adjustment: Adjust brightness, contrast, white point, warmth, tint, skin color, vignette, and more.
- Filters: Apply Google Photos image filters to your video.
- More: Includes the Markup tool, with which you can draw or write over clips.
You can mess around with the new settings as much as you want. Edited clips are saved as a new file, and your changes do not affect the original unedited video.
The update makes Google Photos a lot better for video editing, but Android and iOS still lack some common features that prevent the app from being a full-fledged post-processing tool, such as combining multiple recordings into one video, adding transitions, etc. or applying your own sound to clips while editing. However, the new controls are a significant upgrade from the previous version of Google Photos’ video editing tools, which could only crop, rotate, and stabilize your recordings.