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Android 17 is about to make your phone a much better content creation tool

Google has announced deeper Instagram camera integration, AI-powered features in Edits, and Screen Reactions are coming with Android 17.

By Pranob Mehrotra Published May 12, 2026

Android 17 on a phone. — DigitalTrends/Google

Google has announced a set of creator-focused updates coming to Android 17 at the Android Show I/O Edition today, with new tools for capturing, editing, and sharing content aimed at social media creators and professional filmmakers.

Instagram gets a big upgrade

Google has partnered with Meta to bring several camera improvements to Instagram on flagship Android devices. Android 17 will add Ultra HDR capture, playback, built-in video stabilization, and Night Sight support to Instagram, pulling from the same processing pipeline used by the phone’s stock camera app. The move builds on Android 17’s broader camera changes for third-party apps, which open up advanced hardware features like Super Resolution to apps like Instagram.

Google also claims video shot and uploaded to Instagram from Android flagships will match or beat the leading competitor on quality, based on tests conducted using the Universal Video Quality model, “an AI framework designed to measure how we perceive video quality.”

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Instagram’s Edits app will gain two new Android-exclusive AI tools: Smart Enhance and Sound Separation. The former will upscale photos and videos with a single tap, while the latter will isolate individual audio tracks, so users can lift dialog out of a noisy environment without re-shooting.

More tools for serious creators

Google is making it easier for creators to film reaction videos with a new feature called Screen Reactions. It will let users record their face and the screen at the same time, removing the need for a green screen or a second device. The feature will roll out first on Pixel devices this summer.

Adobe Premiere will also make its way to Android this summer, with exclusive templates and effects for YouTube Shorts, which rolled out on the iOS app earlier this year.

For professional video, support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, a storage-efficient format co-developed by Google and Samsung, will roll out to more Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered flagships later this year. It’s already available on the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Vivo X300 Ultra.

Android has long trailed iPhone on Instagram video quality, and these updates are Google’s most direct attempt to fix that.

Pranob Mehrotra

News Writer

Pranob is a seasoned tech journalist with over eight years of experience covering consumer technology. His work has been…

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