Google updates Vids with Drive integration and a free basic editor

Google updated its browser based video editor Vids this week, adding tighter integration with Google Drive and opening a basic, non AI version of the editor to all consumers while reserving advanced generative tools for paid customers. The company began rolling out a Drive shortcut that lets users open supported video files directly in Vids on August 21 and announced a broader set of Vids upgrades later in the week as part of its late August release.

When previewing a compatible video in Drive a new Open button appears in the preview screen and launches the file inside Vids so users can trim clips, add music or text, layer audio tracks and apply simple edits without downloading the file. The feature supports MP4, QuickTime, OGG and WebM formats and limits individual clips to 35 minutes or 4 gigabytes. Edits are saved as a separate copy to preserve the original file. Google said the Drive shortcut may take up to 15 days to appear for some accounts and works best on desktop browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Edge. Administrators can disable the integration at the domain level and Vids is unavailable if Google Docs is turned off.

At the same time Google made the Vids editor...