Mastering Mobile Video Editing: Lessons from YouTube Create

Mobile video editing is notoriously difficult. The challenge lies in translating complex, timeline-based workflows—traditionally the domain of wide desktop monitors and mouse pointers—onto a small vertical touchscreen.

Google’s YouTube Create app is a masterclass in solving this problem. After analyzing its interface, we’ve identified key UX patterns that make it feel intuitive and powerful, and we’re bringing these lessons to Kinetix.

1. The “Thumb Zone” Architecture

YouTube Create rigidly adheres to the “Thumb Zone” rule.

Top Half (View): Reserved strictly for looking. The preview player dominates this space. It’s sticky, unmoving, and uncluttered.
Bottom Half (Interact): Reserved for doing. The timeline, toolbars, and property settings all live here.

Lesson for Kinetix: We recently redesigned our mobile layout to mirror this. By making the canvas sticky at the top and moving the properties panel to a scrollable bottom view, we prevent the user from having to scroll up and down to see the result of their changes.

2. Visual Grids over Dropdowns

In desktop apps, dropdown menus are standard. On mobile, they are clunky.

YouTube Create avoids dropdowns entirely for things like Effects and Filters. Instead, it uses Visual Grids.

Instant Feedback: You see a preview of the “3D Glasses” or “Paper” effect before you tap it.
Touch Targets: Large, square cards are easier to tap than thin list items.

Lesson for Kinetix: We are deprecating text-based selection for animations and effects. We will replace them with a Visual Assets Grid, allowing users to see a thumbnail of the “Grow” or “Fade” animation before applying it.

3. Contextual Bottom Sheets

When you select a clip in YouTube Create, you don’t jump to a new page. A Bottom Sheet slides up with specific tools for that clip (Split, Volume, Speed).

Mental Model: You never feel “lost” in deep navigation. You can always swipe the sheet down to return to the main timeline.
Focus: It directs attention to the task at hand without hiding the context (the timeline is usually still partially visible or easily accessible).

Lesson for Kinetix: Our “Inspector” panel functions similarly, but we can improve it by moving “Quick Actions” (Delete, Duplicate) to a persistent floating toolbar immediately above the bottom sheet, ensuring they are always one tap away.

4. The Timeline as an Anchor

The timeline in YouTube Create isn’t just a progress bar; it’s the anchor of the experience. It supports:

Pinch to Zoom: Essential for precision.
Multi-track Layers: Showing audio and overlays clearly stacked.

Lesson for Kinetix: Our current timeline is functional but simple. To match this “Pro” feel, we need to visually distinguish between different track types (Text, Image, Audio) and improve the scrubbing interaction to feel more tactile.

Conclusion

Great mobile UX isn’t about hiding features; it’s about organizing them where thumbs naturally fall. By adopting the Visual Grid pattern and Contextual Toolbars, Kinetix is evolving from a web editor into a true mobile-first creative suite.