Aug 17, 2015 - Snapchat users watch over 2 billion videos a day, and the social media titan has been encouraging brands to create more natively vertical.

1:41 The first thing you'd think looking at Clips, 's newly announced video-editing app, is that it's trying to be. But Clips, which I got a chance to try my hands on in New York, doesn't have its own social platform.

It's a video-editing tool. Clips is, in fact, more like a phone-first, vertical-friendly version of iMovie. It's a free app that will arrive in April, and works on the and later, or on an (Air, Mini 2 and later) or an.

I used it for a few minutes to shoot video clips of a barista who nicely made me a coffee. Alas, I don't have that video to share, but I can describe what it was like to make.

Going square Clips records all its video in a square format, like Instagram or Vine. Apple is aiming for video that can be shared vertically or horizontally, and can work well on a phone. The layout of Clips feels like other tools I use all the time. Titles and end cards can be added to videos, much like iMovie's trailer-like effects. In a lot of ways, Clips feels like it's inherited some of that trailer-mode spirit from its older sibling.

The tools are simple: Pressing and holding a red record button captures video clips, or you can add ones from your camera roll. Multiple clips can be added and then dragged around to re-edit nonlinearly, like iMovie.

In that sense, it feels more advanced than the editing tools you find in Snapchat or Vine. There are real-time filters for photos or video, from tinted black-and-white to Prisma-like comic book effects. Emoji can be slapped onto videos in various sizes, but there aren't any iMessage stickers.

According to Apple, however, it's committed to adding new effects and filters over time. There are also a bunch of bubbles and other effects, which I didn't even get a chance to try.

Video clips can be edited and moved around, making it a little like a mini-iMovie. Apple Auto-transcribed captions and automatic soundtracks What really impressed me was the app's ability to turn audio into captions added right into the video, timed to when you actually said it. If I slowly deliver a line such as, 'I'm about to have. A coffee,' the text pops up appropriately and even adds line breaks for effect.

Some captions scroll across the bottom like a TV, while others pop up large, word by word, splashed across the screen. Apple designed it for people who watch videos with audio off, like almost everyone on. There are several dozen soundtracks included in the app, and they layer in automatically to fit the video clip's length.

Some recognizable artists are on there, including film composer Hans ' Zimmer. I set my coffee video to Zimmer's thumping orchestral riffs, and it was as absurd as I'd hoped. Clips on an iPad, showing a debt to iMovie's trailer mode. Apple Not a social network (or maybe it is, just a bit) Clips isn't designed to have its own social network. It exports and directly shares into other apps, including Facebook, Vimeo, and Instagram to start. According to Apple, to share with Snapchat you'll just save a video to your camera roll and upload once you're in Snapchat.