YouTube Create: Video editor

YouTube Create Review: Free, Ad-Free Editing That Lives on One Phone

Free With No Ads, but Only in 21 Countries and on 4 GB Phones

There is no subscription, no in-app purchase and no ad break: Google's creator site promises the app at no cost and without ads, and neither store lists ads or in-app purchases. Exports reach 4K at up to 60 fps, and neither the listing nor YouTube's help mentions a watermark on finished videos. Access is the limit: 21 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, India and Brazil, but not Mexico, Italy or Japan. Android needs version 8.0 and 4 GB of RAM; Apple support starts at the iPhone XR on iOS 17, with no iPad build. The Android beta arrived in September 2023, the iPhone app in December 2025.

Shorts Audio Library vs Royalty-Free Music: The 15- and 60-Second Rules

The Sound panel has four tabs: the Shorts Audio Library, royalty-free music, sound effects and songs saved on your phone, and they follow different rules. YouTube's own blog says the royalty-free catalog of thousands of tracks can go into monetized videos without copyright claims. Licensed hits from the Shorts library are tighter. Export a video longer than 15 seconds to your gallery and the track is stripped automatically; upload straight to YouTube and you keep up to 60 seconds of it. Some licensed songs cannot be split, duplicated or mixed with other music in the same project. For anything longer than a minute, that leaves the royalty-free tab or your own audio files.

Auto Captions, Edit with AI and Gemini Omni: What Works Where

Captions take one tap, for all speech or for in-app voiceovers only, styled by font, color, outline and shadow. They cannot be generated for clips longer than 60 seconds, and only selected languages are supported. Edit with AI, offered in 14 countries, turns up to 25 photos and clips, five seconds to five minutes of footage, into a draft under 15, 15 to 30 or 31 to 60 seconds. The generative tools are narrower: Gemini Omni makes vertical clips up to 10 seconds from a 900-character prompt and up to three reference images, and Nano Banana images need users aged 18 or older, both only in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India.

Projects Stay on One Phone, and Apple's Privacy Label Says More

Projects are saved on the device, not in your Google account. YouTube's help warns that deleting the app or changing phones erases them, so export first; a July 2026 one-star Play review reports losing every project after an update. Failed exports are a listed known issue, with advice to remove layers or drop from 1080p to 720p, and publishing from Android needs the YouTube app on the same profile and account. On data, the Play card says nothing is shared with third parties and lists app activity, diagnostics, user IDs and an optional email. Apple's label goes further: identifiers and product interaction linked to you, used partly for third-party advertising.