YouTube’s new Effect Maker puts it in competition with TikTok and Snapchat

Thanks to a new feature, “fantastical scenes” are coming to YouTube Shorts.

That’s how a video on the Creator Insider channel describes the output of Effect Maker, a tool that lets users design and share augmented reality (AR) overlays for short-form YouTube videos. Completed effects will be available to all logged-in users who have access to YouTube Shorts, and creators can set up a separate channel tab to show off the effects they’ve built and distributed.

According to the relevant Creator Insider video, YouTube has been honing Effect Maker “over the past year” and “slowly expanding” access to the feature. The latest update makes Effect Maker “widely available to users with access to advanced features on YouTube,” but there’s a catch: The tool is only available on desktop devices for now, and YouTube doesn’t have any information to share about a potential mobile rollout.

Even with that limitation, YouTube sees Effect Maker as an asset that will make “Shorts creation more fun and effective.” A tutorial published on the YouTube Creators channel explains how the effects creation process works.

Fun tools for creators are nice, but YouTube also stands to benefit from the launch of Effect Maker. Similar features are already available on Snap (Lens Studio

) and TikTok (Effect House), and effects built through those hubs have started to show up on YouTube Shorts.

Rather than forcing its users to go elsewhere to craft effect-driven formats (or limiting them to crude imitations), YouTube is doing what it can to provide the same tools and experiences that already exist on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. The decision to change the counting formula for Shorts, for example, made YouTube’s short-form viewership look more like TikTok’s.

The Effect Maker rollout could also spawn a new revenue stream. Both Snapchat and TikTok have built monetization into their effect creation tools, and YouTube now has the opportunity to do the same (though it has not indicated that effect monetization is imminent).

While the benefits of Effect Maker are limited to reach and engagement for now, YouTube does plan to bring in some upgrades in the near future. Some AI-powered effects, for example, are on the way. To get more details and check eligibility for your channel, click here.