Google Photos introduces customizable video editing tools for year-end highlight reels

What you need to know

• Google Photos introduces enhanced video editing tools for personalized highlight reels.
• New features include customizable templates, music, and stylish text overlays for seamless editing.
• Editing tools rollout begins on Dec.9, making video creation easier for users.

With all those platforms offering year-end recaps to revisit your best memories and peek into 2025, Google Photos is jumping in! Today, they've announced a bunch of video editing tools so you can easily mash up your favorite pictures and clips, add some text, and throw in some cool music to create a reel that you can seamlessly share on different social media platforms.

Google is making it easier for users to create a reel featuring multiple video clips and photos in Google Photos by hitting the "Create" tab and selecting “highlight video,” picking the content you want included, and Google Photos will create a single video for you.

But it doesn't just end there. Now, you don't have to jump through several hoops, or rather editing apps, to fine-tune the highlight video. From using ready-made templates, a redesigned video editor, to adding music and custom text, the tech giant is bringing five new features to make these reels more personal.

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Google Photos will show you different templates to pick from, giving you a creative push for your highlight reel if you don't know where to begin. The platform has significantly updated its editor to be more user-friendly and intuitive, giving it a major glow-up. The enhanced editor supports multi-clip editing and storytelling, and also includes an "adaptive canvas" to simplify the editing process, like switching around clips within the video or adjusting the length of the video clip, all in one place.

Additionally, users will be able to edit and customize each video clip within the reel by adding music or custom text to it as well.

Speaking of having it all in one place, users will also be able to add audio from the Photos’ music library and pick the perfect track that adds "emotion or brings out the right vibe to your highlight video on Android and iOS."

Google Photos is adding text editing features, basically ditching the need to switch to other applications like Instagram or TikTok. Users on Android can now utilize "stylish text overlays" for their highlight videos, with customizable options for fonts, colors, and backgrounds to make their message prominent.

Google says these editing tools will begin rolling out today (Dec.9), so you can give them a go within the Photos app.