Instagram brings Edits video editor to Mac with AI-agent tools

Instagram’s Edits video editor launched on macOS on Nov. 5, bringing creators a desktop timeline and a way to connect AI agents to video-editing tools. The app is currently unavailable on Windows and Linux, The Verge reported.

What Edits adds on Mac

The desktop app is built for projects that benefit from a larger screen, mouse and keyboard. It includes a multi-track timeline, audio waveforms for precise cuts, keyframes for transitions and more advanced color-grading tools. Creators can customize keyboard shortcuts or import them from other editing software, and bring in their own font files.

Creators can publish directly from the desktop editor to Instagram, with tagging and location features built into the process. That lets them avoid moving an exported file to a phone to finish edits or add those details, TechCrunch reported.

How AI agents can work with Edits

The desktop app includes an MCP connection that lets users choose an AI agent to work with video through Edits. Matthew Simari, Instagram’s head of product management for Edits, told The Verge that creators could use Meta’s Muse or another agent, then move between agent-assisted and manual editing.

Simari described a possible workflow in which an agent accesses video files, makes a rough cut through the Edits MCP connection and leaves the creator to continue in the project file. He presented it as an example of how the tools could be used.

Why cross-device editing is still a gap

Creators had heavily requested a desktop version, Simari told The Verge. Edits first launched on mobile last year, and Instagram said it would continue developing that app for the more than 50 million creators who use it, TechCrunch reported.

Projects cannot yet be edited seamlessly across mobile and desktop. Meta is working on that capability and plans weekly updates to the desktop app, but has not given a release date, The Verge reported.

The Mac release gives Edits a desktop presence in a market where ByteDance’s CapCut has offered Windows and Mac apps since 2021. Meta launched Edits to challenge CapCut, making desktop availability a more direct point of competition between the two video editors.