Skip to main content

Instagram Reels launches in the U.S. to lure you off TikTok

Instagram Reels is now available in the U.S. — and the new feature is a lot like TikTok. 

Reels is an in-app editing tool for creating 15-second videos synced to music or another type of audio. The new feature also allows users to choose an audio clip to use with the video. 

You can also add effects, speed up or slow down a video, align multiple clips, and use a timer and a countdown to record hands-free. 

Instagram

You can discover other people’s Reels in Instagram’s “Explore” tab and in Instagram Stories, or, if you have a private account, you can share Reels with your followers directly in your feed. Just like Instagram Stories, private Reels will disappear after 24 hours.

Aside from the U.S., Reels is also available in France, Germany, the U.K., Australia, Mexico, and other countries. The feature originally launched in Brazil in November, but its release in the U.S. comes at an interesting time, as President Donald Trump is threatening to ban rival TikTok over privacy concerns and its Chinese origins. 

India banned TikTok in June over similar concerns with the app, but Instagram Reels could be the country’s answer to the ban since the new feature goes live to Instagram users in India starting Wednesday.

Reels is not parent company Facebook’s first shot at grabbing some of TikTok’s growth. Lasso was a video-sharing iOS app that had an emphasis on short videos, just like TikTok. The app merged with Musical.ly to add audio to videos, but it has been shut down since July 8.

Editors' Recommendations

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
Is TikTok leaking drafts? Let’s take a closer look at this rumor
The TikTok app on a smartphone's screen. The smartphone is sitting on a white table.

Not every social media post is ready for prime time. Sometimes you write a post or film a video and decide that it's better to not publish it. That's fine. That's what the Drafts folder is for. That folder is built to hold your works-in-progress, mistakes, and other too-goofy-for-public-consumption posts and videos. The Drafts folder is probably one that you take for granted, but what if that folder (via a particularly viral-prone social media platform) were to have its content leaked and published for the world to see? Scary, isn't it?

That's the fear that's behind a certain, now years-long TikTok rumor going around. But is it true? Is TikTok leaking its users' drafts? In this guide, we're taking a closer look at this rumor and fact-checking it.
The rumor
As far as we can tell, the whole "TikTok leaks drafts" rumor dates back to at least the summer of 2020. It's not a rumor that really made mainstream news headlines, but it did get some coverage with lesser-known websites, and it does have a tendency to resurface repeatedly. The last time it resurfaced was in August 2022. Here's what we know about it:

Read more
TikTok pivots to photos while its competitors are still chasing its viral videos
Smartphone with TikTok's Photo Mode all on a white background.

TikTok's competitors have been all over the news recently for essentially copying the short-form video sharing app's  most successful moves. But while everyone else is pivoting to video, TikTok is now taking swings in the other direction: photos.

On Thursday, TikTok announced a slew of new editing and creation features, but the one tool that caught our eye was Photo Mode. Because the image that TikTok shared in its official announcement depicted a photo carousel-style image post that looks a lot like Instagram.

Read more
New feature shows that even Twitter wants to be like TikTok now
Twitter's new full screen feature for videos on the mobile app.

Is TikTok the new queen bee of social media? It appears so as even Twitter couldn't resist copying TikTok. Twitter's latest feature announcement seems to be yet another indication that the viral video app sensation is clearly the new leader among its peers. After all, TikTok is setting trends and its competitors are all following them.

On Thursday, Twitter announced two new video-focused features for its app and one of those features bears a strong resemblance to TikTok. That feature (known as the "immersive media viewer") allows users to open videos in a vertical "full-screen mode" -- just like TikTok -- and continue to view more videos by swiping up (also just like TikTok).

Read more