YouTube is killing its built-in video editing tools

If you're editing on a long video project directly on YouTube, you now have a deadline.

The Google-owned video platform announced on Friday it will shut down its built-in Video Editor feature on Sept. 20.

The toolkit has been around since 2010, but has fallen on hard times. One of Google's community managers wrote in the YouTube Help Forum that the axing comes as a result of "limited usage of these features." As few as 0.1 percent of all creators use the built-in video editing tools, a YouTube spokesperson told us, so describing its popularity as "limited usage" is a bit generous.

YouTube's photo slideshow creation tool will also bite the dust on the same date.

The site's Enhancements feature will stick around in the Video Manager, so users will still be able to tweak their uploads with blur effects, filters, and trimming directly on the page. You'll essentially be able to make your footage watchable still — but if you want some next-level editing, you'll have to check out some other video editing programs, which is exactly what the site's help page is directing creators to do.

The YouTube team is essentially throwing in the towel on the on-site editing could lead to some new features for its community, with less time focused on the upkeep of a toolkit with a tiny user base.

YouTube's decision is making us worry about the fate of its Capture app, which hasn't been updated since 2013 but still ranks fairly high in terms of usage. It's one of the 32-bit relics that could disappear with the introduction of iOS 11 later this year — which, coincidentally, is also in September. We reached out to YouTube to ask if Capture will bite the dust as well, but they didn't comment on the matter.