YouTube's Create app, a competitor to TikTok's creative tools, expands to 13 more markets

YouTube Create, Google’s standalone mobile app aimed at creators, which helps them produce both Shorts and longer videos, is expanding to a broader set of markets after last fall’s launch into beta testing. The app was initially available on Android in the U.S. and a handful of other select markets, but today will become available to over a dozen more countries, including Brazil, Spain, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and others.

With this move, Create will now be offered in a total of 21 countries.

The idea behind Create is to offer video creators an easy-to-use suite of free tools for making videos on the go. Announced at YouTube’s Create event last September, the tool aims to address specific challenges creators face, including editing videos and the use of creative tools, like stickers, GIFs and effects. The app additionally takes aim at TikTok, whose built-in creative tools and AR and AI filters have made it a popular choice for non-technical creators who want to experiment with video but may not have editing know-how.

With Create, users can upload clips, split and trim videos, use effects and access royalty-free music to complement their videos. These songs, which are copyright-safe, will also sync the beats of the song to the video clips, similar to TikTok.

Another popular tool, Audio Cleanup, leverages a denoising model to reduce background and ambient noise and enhance the audio quality of users’ clips recorded on their smartphones.

Also available is a built-in voiceover tool that includes automatic and editable captions, with various options to stylize the text.

When users have finalized their edits, they can publish directly to YouTube with just a tap.

By offering a suite of tools just for YouTube creators, the company hopes to capture more of the market that prefers to use standalone tools for editing videos. For instance, even though TikTok has a large library of built-in effects, many creators turn to ByteDance’s other creative app, CapCut, to prep their TikTok videos. Create offers a similar flow for those who prefer to publish on YouTube instead.

Starting today, the Create app is available in new markets including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey. It initially launched in the U.S., Germany, France, U.K., India, Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore.