Adobe Brings Its Powerful Premiere Video-Editing App to iPhone

Adobe said Tuesday that it’s bringing its Premiere video-editing software to the iPhone for the first time, an effort to fend off competition from a mix of mobile-friendly rivals.

Premiere has long been among the most popular desktop applications for creatives and professionals doing intensive video work — joined by Apple’s Final Cut Pro and Blackmagic Design Pty’s DaVinci Resolve.

But a fully fledged mobile version of Premiere had been elusive until now. The software’s expansion to smartphones reflects a new competitive landscape where Adobe is trying to avoid losing users to fast-rising editing software like the ByteDance-owned CapCut and Edits from Meta’s Instagram unit, both of which are designed to quickly produce video for social media with interfaces that are welcoming to novices.

Like those apps, Premiere on the iPhone is free to use for general editing and doesn’t require a recurring subscription. But Adobe will charge for credits that let you generate content with artificial intelligence. The app’s AI features include generative video, images, stickers and sound effects. It also offers what Adobe calls “assistive” AI tools such as speech enhancement, background removal and automatic captioning. The company says it does not use customers’ content to train its generative AI models.

Adobe previously released a streamlined app for Android and iOS called Premiere Rush that offered fewer tools and less comprehensive editing capabilities. The company is discontinuing that in favor of the new Premiere mobile experience. Premiere Rush is also being removed from Google Play, leaving Android users without an Adobe-made video editor for the time being.

“We are working on bringing the power of Premiere to Android devices down the road,” the company said. Android users can sign up to participate in an upcoming beta version. Adobe took a similarly Apple-first approach with Photoshop earlier this year: That app debuted on the iPhone with an Android beta alongside it.

The new app still lacks Adobe’s full desktop feature set. In cases where that’s insufficient, Premiere Pro subscribers can import projects and media from the phone to their desktop for more sophisticated editing work.