Nearly a year after releasing Premiere for iPhone, Adobe is finally bringing its redesigned video-editing app to Android. The app has been in beta for several weeks but is now available as the official successor to Premiere Rush, which the company will stop supporting on September 30.
Eric Snowden, senior vice president of design at Adobe, tells WIRED the feedback for the iOS app has been “incredibly positive” (to his credit, it has a 4.8-star rating out of 5 on the App Store with more than 25,000 ratings). The goal with the Android version wasn’t just to port the iPhone app experience, but to make it feel really native to Google’s platform.
That includes making sure the app works just as well on every kind of Android device out there, whether it’s a Samsung foldable or a candy bar Google Pixel. Yes, when you open up a folding phone with the Adobe Premiere app, you can view your footage on the left and see the multi-track timeline on the right, maximizing space. Snowden suggests optimizing the app for Android foldables will help the company with the iPhone app for the upcoming iPhone Duo.
Courtesy of Adobe
And if you’re wondering whether this app will work well on Google’s new Googlebook laptop platform, Adobe says its apps—Acrobat, Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere—are optimized for the new laptops, meaning they’ll take advantage of the larger screen, but can’t quite deliver the “desktop-grade” experience you’ll find on Windows or macOS.
Equally important is ensuring the app runs on lower-power devices, though Premiere has a minimum requirement of 5 GB of RAM (phones will also need to run Android 13 or later).
“We wanted this to run on as many devices as possible, so the team spent a ton of time making sure that this is not just for flagship phones,” Snowden says. “This is for a really broad range of Android devices.”
Launch the Adobe Premiere app and you will see all your footage from your camera roll on the home screen. From there, you can choose creator-made templates—ranging from lifestyle to beauty to templates for foodies—to get started on an edit, or start from scratch if you’d like.
It’s easy to add your footage, then opt for the mini editor or the full editor. The former lets you easily trim or replace your footage, and even choose a filter to apply a specific color style to all of your clips. You can export directly to YouTube Shorts without leaving Premiere. The full editor gives you a multitrack timeline for more granular edits, like layering text, music, and effects.
Several AI tools are on board, like Enhance Audio, which can boost the subject’s voice and cut background noise. If you want to add a voice-over, you can speak into your phone’s mic and see your footage in real time so it all matches up. Adobe says the app has Firefly-powered AI features, like Generative Fill, Image-to-Video, and Generate Sound Effects. However, these require generative credits, aka a subscription, if you run out of your monthly allotment.
Some features are still “coming soon,” like the Continue Editing function so you can wrap up an edit on desktop after starting it on mobile, or support for Adobe Fonts.
Uniquely (for an Adobe product), you do not have to log in or subscribe to Adobe’s creative suite to use Premiere on Android. Like the iOS version, the app is free to use.
“What we’re seeing with a lot of mobile apps right now is that there are these huge barriers to entry to using it for the first time,” Snowden says. “We really wanted to get away from that, and I think part of the accessibility and simplicity of the app—the onboarding process is part of that—and we just want to get people in and using it.”
