Social networking apps like Instagram are taking advantage of China’s ByteDance-owned TikTok’s uncertain future in the United States. Most of these apps, especially Meta-owned Instagram, have copied many features from TikTok in the past few months. Meta already launched a handful of new functionalities for the Reels section of Instagram earlier to lure TikTok users in the US. Now, Instagram has once again copied TikTok and now lets you speed up Reels videos.
Now you can fast-forward Reels videos on Instagram
TikTok already had a feature that allowed you to speed up Reels, and now it’s also available in the Instagram app. The Meta-owned social media platform’s new functionality lets you play a reel at 2x speed by long pressing either the left or right side of the display. The Instagram community has been requesting this feature for a while. Essentially, the ability to fast-forward provides you with more control over your Reels experience.
Similar to TikTok, Instagram also lets creators post videos that are multiple minutes long. The latest feature will give users the option to watch such videos quickly. It also increases the chances of a user getting to the end of longer Reels videos.
Instagram’s new feature to fast-forward Reels is available to all users. If you haven’t received the new functionality yet, you may need to update the app on your phone.
Instagram is also launching Edits, a direct rival to ByteDance’s CapCut
Apart from introducing TikTok-inspired features for its platform, Instagram will also launch a new video-editing app called Edits. It will directly compete with TikTok-owner ByteDance’s CapCut application. As per Instagram, Edits is a complete suite of creative tools for editing videos for social media content. It also has a live insights dashboard, which is a breakdown of follower and non-follower engagement.
Earlier, Instagram had scheduled to launch the Edits app on March 13th. However, the company has now delayed the launch by more than a month. If you visit the pre-order page for the Edits app on the App Store, it now mentions, “Expected Apr 30, 2025”.
