Lift: AI Video & Photo Editor

What it does

Lift is a comprehensive mobile editor designed for creating social media content. It combines a template-driven approach for stories and reels with a suite of manual and AI-powered editing tools. Users can start from scratch or use pre-made designs, customize them with their own media, and leverage features like background removal, object erasing, and AI image generation to produce polished visuals.

Where it shines

Lift excels at guiding users through its extensive feature set with contextual onboarding. When entering the story editor for the first time, a series of quick tooltips (01:54) introduces the main functions without being intrusive. For more complex features like the Magic Eraser, the app provides a dedicated, skippable instruction screen (05:19) explaining the necessary gestures. This just-in-time approach to education makes the app feel accessible despite its depth.

UX highlights

Personalized Onboarding: A detailed quiz (00:26-01:25) tailors the initial user experience, making the app feel customized from the start.
Value-Reinforcing Loaders: The "Customizing..." screen (01:25) animates text related to the user's quiz answers, turning a wait time into a value proposition.
Layer-Based Editing: The story editor provides a clear, layer-based interface (06:36), allowing users to easily manage and reorder different elements like text, stickers, and media.
In-Editor Previews: When selecting fonts or effects, the changes are previewed live on the canvas, providing immediate feedback (02:49).
Feature-Specific Tutorials: The app includes a robust "Learn" section with video tutorials for specific features like adding music or using AI tools (16:13).
Contextual AI Prompts: After removing the background from an image, the app prompts the user to "Go to Magic Eraser" (05:17), suggesting a logical next step in the editing workflow.

Monetization & growth

Lift presents a soft paywall early in the onboarding flow at 00:09, right after displaying its high App Store rating to build trust. The offer is a 3-day free trial that converts to a weekly subscription. The paywall clearly visualizes the trial period with a 3-day timeline, explaining what the user gets each day. The user can easily dismiss it to explore the app, indicating a strategy focused on demonstrating value before securing a commitment. After key actions like exporting content, the app prompts the user for feedback (07:02), which can be used to improve the product and gather positive reviews.

Who it’s for

The app is clearly targeted at social media content creators, small business owners, bloggers, and SMM specialists, as indicated by its onboarding quiz (00:28). It serves users who want to create high-quality, engaging content for platforms like Instagram and TikTok but may not have professional design skills. The focus on templates, AI tools, and guided editing makes it suitable for both beginners and intermediate users looking to streamline their creative process.

Notes & opportunities

The app does an excellent job of organizing a large number of features. However, the immediate, back-to-back system permission prompts for tracking and notifications (00:00-00:03) create initial friction. A warm-up screen explaining the benefits of enabling these permissions could improve opt-in rates. Additionally, while the in-editor tooltips are helpful, their rapid-fire appearance on the first use could still feel slightly overwhelming. Pacing them out or tying them to the user's first interaction with each tool could be an area for refinement.