10 Best Video Editors for Mac of 2026

Final Cut Pro tops this list because it is the editor Apple builds for its own hardware. The App Store listing describes optimizations for the latest generation of Apple silicon, and the app opens a long list of formats including ProRes, ProRes RAW, RED, XAVC, HEVC and H.264. The Magnetic Timeline keeps clips in sync as you trim, Magnetic Mask isolates people without a green screen, and Generate Captions writes subtitles from spoken audio. Transcript Search and Visual Search help you find a line or a shot in long footage. Apple now sells it two ways: Apple Creator Studio at $12.99 per month or $129 per year, which also includes Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro and Motion, or a one-time $299.99 Mac App Store license. The limits are platform and hardware. It runs only on Mac and iPad, the current release needs macOS 26.6 or later, and several AI features need Apple silicon. Owners of older Intel Macs should check requirements first.

DaVinci Resolve is the best free video editor for Mac. Blackmagic Design positions it as a single app for editing, visual effects, motion graphics, color correction and audio post production, and the free version is not a cut down trial. It works with virtually all 8-bit video formats at up to 60fps in resolutions as high as Ultra HD 3840 x 2160, and Blackmagic notes that it includes multi-user collaboration and HDR grading. For most MacBook owners that covers family films, YouTube uploads and client work. DaVinci Resolve Studio is a one-time $236 purchase that adds the DaVinci AI Neural Engine, more Resolve FX, noise reduction, text based editing, magic mask, 10-bit video up to 120fps and resolutions beyond 4K. The trade-off is learning time. The work is split across pages for cutting, color, effects and audio, so beginners will move more slowly than in iMovie for the first few projects. It ranks second only because Final Cut Pro is easier to learn on a Mac.

iMovie is the simplest way to start editing on a Mac and it costs nothing. The Mac App Store lists it as free, and Apple describes 4K editing with video from iPhone 6s or later, GoPro and other Ultra HD cameras on compatible Macs, plus 1080p at 60 frames per second. You get 29 trailer templates, titles, transitions, travel maps, slow motion, picture-in-picture and green screen effects, along with one-click Enhance, stabilization and the Ken Burns effect. It also opens Magic Movie, Storyboard and Movie projects made in iMovie on iPhone or iPad, which suits people who shoot on a phone and finish on a MacBook. The limits show once projects grow. Text and caption styling is basic, there are no scopes or advanced grading tools, and there is no multicam timeline. When that happens, iMovie can send the project straight to Final Cut Pro. The newest version needs macOS 26.4 or later, so older Macs may be stuck on an earlier release.

CapCut is the quickest route from phone clips to a finished social video on a Mac. CapCut Desktop supports macOS 10.14 or above, so it also runs on older MacBooks that cannot install the latest Apple apps. The editor offers keyframes and graphs for animation, a color wheel with auto adjust, smart search that finds media by objects, dialogue and people, automatic captions and auto reframe that keeps the subject in frame when you change aspect ratio. Projects can be stored in your cloud Space and opened on other devices. The free plan includes free templates and basic editing tools. Pro and Ultra plans add AI credits, premium templates, premium features and storage, but the pricing page showed Polish zloty from our location, so we have not quoted a USD price. CapCut is designed around short vertical content first. For long YouTube videos or color work, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro are better tools.

Kdenlive is a mature open source editor from the KDE community, and its download page offers separate macOS builds for Apple silicon and Intel, requiring macOS 13 Ventura or newer. The feature set is broader than most free editors. You get multicam and 3-point editing, nested sequences, markers and automatic backups, hundreds of effects and transitions with keyframes, LUTs and creative grading with histogram, vectorscope, RGB parade and waveform scopes, plus subtitles with automatic transcription. Proxy clips make heavy footage play smoothly on modest hardware, which helps on older MacBook Air models. The drawbacks are polish and familiarity. The interface comes from the Linux desktop and feels less native than Final Cut Pro or iMovie, and the project depends on a small, mostly volunteer team. Still, for a Mac user who wants a free editor with no watermark and no account, it covers a great deal of ground.

Filmora sits between iMovie and the professional editors. Wondershare describes its Mac version as optimized for macOS and Apple silicon, with Metal GPU acceleration, ProRes support and 4K editing with HDR and wide color. The feature list leans toward creators who post often: auto captions, silence detection, audio ducking, beat sync, keyframes, templates and a growing set of AI tools for generating clips, removing objects and cleaning up audio. The Basic plan is listed at $49.99 per year, and Wondershare's FAQ says one Basic or Advanced license covers both Mac and PC. A perpetual license is also available, but that one is device specific. The catch for free users is the watermark: the free edition includes the basic editing features, but exports are watermarked. Many AI features also draw on credits, so heavy AI users should read the credit allowances before choosing a plan. For a MacBook owner who finds iMovie too limited and Final Cut Pro too much, it is a sensible middle step.

Adobe Premiere, the desktop editor long known as Premiere Pro, is the professional choice when your Mac work sits inside the Adobe ecosystem. Adobe highlights Text-Based Editing, one-click masking and tracking of subjects including hair, hands and faces, over 100 customizable effects and transitions, and a new Color Mode built for editors who grade as they cut. Its AI Assistant can sort assets into bins, batch-rename clips and assemble rough cuts, and the app can generate or extend clips with Firefly, Kling and Google Veo models. Membership includes 25 monthly generative credits and integration with Photoshop, After Effects and Illustrator. Adobe states that Premiere is available only as a membership with monthly or annual commitments, and the desktop app has a seven-day free trial. The pricing page did not show USD from our location, so the price is pending here. For a solo MacBook user, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve offer similar depth at lower long-term cost.

Shotcut is a free, open source editor from Meltytech, and its standout trait is format handling. Through FFmpeg it supports hundreds of audio and video formats, and because there is no import step you edit files natively, even mixing resolutions and frame rates on one timeline. The download page lists a universal macOS build for macOS 12 to 27, with archived builds for macOS 11 and for 10.14 and 10.15, so it covers more Mac generations than most editors. Shotcut also supports Blackmagic Design SDI and HDMI for input and preview monitoring, screen and webcam capture, and dockable panels. Recent releases added auto duck, adjustment clips and HDR, and new versions arrive about every two months. The downside is that it looks and feels like a cross-platform tool rather than a Mac app, and it has fewer ready-made templates than CapCut or Filmora. For straightforward edits of mixed footage with no cost, it is dependable.

OpenShot aims to be the easy free editor, and its feature list is broader than that suggests. The project lists timeline editing across unlimited tracks with snapping and waveforms, keyframes for position, scale, rotation, opacity and volume, color wheels, curves, LUTs and full scopes, chroma key and other effects, interactive video masks and audio visualizations. Version 4.1, released in October 2026, added text directly on the video and automatic optimization of heavy 4K footage. OpenShot says you can edit without subscriptions, watermarks or project limits. The Mac caveat matters: the download page offers a 64-bit Intel installer for macOS rather than a native Apple silicon build, so MacBooks with M-series chips are better served by Kdenlive, Shotcut or DaVinci Resolve. On an Intel Mac, or for a beginner who wants something friendlier than Kdenlive, OpenShot is a fair free option.

Lightworks is a professional editor with a free tier that the company calls free forever. That plan includes professional timeline editing, Full HD 1080p export, effects and transitions, color correction and grading and multitrack audio. The Create tier adds 4K Ultra HD export, BRAW and ProRes decode, NewBlue Titler Pro, audio noise reduction and cloud storage integration. Pro goes further with up to 8K and 10-bit video, HDR editing and full scopes, Apple ProRes encoding and AU and VST3 plug-ins, which matter on a Mac. You can pay monthly, yearly or once for a perpetual license, and Lightworks says it is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux. The pricing page showed pounds from our location, so the USD price is pending. The interface follows traditional editing conventions and takes longer to learn than Final Cut Pro, and the 1080p ceiling on the free plan makes DaVinci Resolve the stronger free choice for 4K footage.