Instagram is testing a new feature that lets users borrow video formats from other platforms. Learn more about Reels templates here!

The battle for top short form video content platform continues. Although Instagram is still more popular than TikTok, Reels doesn’t attract as much average engagement as its Chinese adversary. Instagram isn’t showing signs of backing down any time soon, though. This year, Instagram is focussing increasingly on its Reels feature, in a bid to take first place.

Recently, new features were announced, with some suggesting further that reposted TikTok content won’t be promoted on Instagram. With a push to encourage users to create original content on the platform, it’s no shock to learn about the new Reels templates feature.

The feature, simply called Templates, was spied back in January by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi. Since then, marketing manager and influencer Josephine Hill has actually got to test out the feature.

It appears that Templates allows users to swap out clips for their own, keeping the timestamps and layout the same. This saves creators from heading to third party sites, like Canva, for this sort of video editing. A Meta spokesperson told Insider, “we are always working on new ways to make Reels simpler to create.”

This new Reels Templates feature appears strikingly similar to TikTok’s own template options. On TikTok, users can drop their own video into preset sequences. Evidently this tested Instagram feature is one more move in a line of many to draw users away from TikTok completely. Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri revealed that Instagram would be down ranking content featuring the TikTok watermark on the platform.

With Instagram acting as a major marketing tool for businesses and individuals alike, having a templates option could make video creation much quicker. This could help it contend more strongly with TikTok, which many creators prefer for short form video creation for its ease of use.