How to Add Music and Adjust Audio in Edits

Edits treats audio as its own layer, separate from the video. That means you can move it, trim it and change its volume without touching the footage. There are several sources you can bring onto the timeline:

• Music and trending audio from the in-app audio picker.
• Saved audio you bookmarked earlier, including sounds from other Reels.
• Original audio taken from your own video clips.
• Sound effects from the built-in library.
• Voiceover recorded directly onto the timeline.

Menu names can vary slightly by app version, so the steps below describe controls by what they do. Look for the Audio tool in the editor toolbar. Clean up your clips first with the trim, split and reorder tutorial.

1. Open your project and move the playhead to where the music should begin.
2. Open the Audio tool from the toolbar and browse or search the library, or pick something you saved earlier.
3. Preview a track before adding it, so you know it fits the mood.
4. Add it and the track appears as a layer under your video on the timeline.
5. Trim and position it. Drag the ends to set where it starts and stops, and drag the layer to line up its best moment with your edit.

A note on your own music files. Older guides say Edits can't import music files directly, while more recent reports describe an update that lets you import and save custom audio. Which you see depends on your app version, so check the audio tool on your device. Whichever route you use, make sure you have the rights to the music, especially for business or monetised accounts: Instagram's library is the safest default.

Small sounds make an edit feel finished: a whoosh on a transition, a click on a text pop, a ding on a reveal. Edits has a sound effects library, and a recent update reportedly added more than 200 new effects. You can also save sounds, including ones you find in other clips, and reuse them across projects without searching again.

Place a sound effect on its own layer, trim it to length, and line it up with the visual it belongs to. Use effects sparingly: one well-timed sound beats a constant stream. For transitions, see the transitions tutorial.

Select an audio layer or a clip to change its volume on its own. The usual mix for talking videos is voice loud, music low: music should be felt, not competing. You can also boost a clip's volume well above its original level (up to 150%) when speech is too quiet, and you can change the volume of every clip in a project at once to keep levels even. A recent update also reportedly added Loudness Match, which balances levels across clips, background audio and voiceovers automatically.

• Start with the voice. Set it so it is comfortably loud on your phone speaker.
• Then lower the music until every word is clear.
• Check with headphones and the speaker. A mix that sounds fine in earphones can be muddy on a phone speaker.

A fade stops music starting or ending abruptly. Set a fade-in at the start of a track and a fade-out where it ends, and adjust how quickly the fade happens. Ducking goes a step further: music dips automatically while someone speaks, then rises again when they stop. Several creator tutorials demonstrate a volume ducking feature in Edits; check your version to see whether it is available to you, and if not, set the same effect by hand with a lower music level under speech.

For deeper controls, see the advanced audio tools guide.

You can record a voiceover directly onto the timeline while you watch your video, which is ideal for tutorials, travel clips and product videos. Record in a quiet room, hold the phone steady and speak a little slower than normal. Voice enhancement can reduce background noise in a voiceover, and voice effects can change how a voice sounds if you want something playful.

You can also separate a clip's own audio so you can edit it independently of its video. Our voiceover tutorial goes through recording step by step, and once your voice is clean, add on-screen words with the captions tutorial.

Cutting on the beat is the simplest way to make a Reel feel professional. Add your music first, zoom into the waveform, and split or trim your clips so each cut lands on a peak. Cuts that follow the rhythm feel intentional even when the footage is simple. The split and trim controls are covered in our trim and split tutorial, and Reels strategy is in the Instagram Reels guide.

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Music drowns out the voice	Music layer is too loud	Lower the music; use ducking or fade it under speech
Voice is too quiet even at full volume	Low recording level	Boost the clip's volume, then re-record closer to the mic if needed
Audio drifts out of sync after trimming	Audio and video moved separately	Trim both together, or re-align the audio layer
Can't find the song you want	Not in your region's library	Choose another track or use a saved sound
Hissing or background noise	Wind, fans or traffic	Use voice enhancement; re-record somewhere quiet
No sound after export	Audio muted or layer volume at zero	Check each layer's volume, then re-export

Still stuck? See audio problems and set export quality in the export settings guide.