Drift Android

Create polished videos fast — free, open, and yours.

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Drift is a free, open-source video editor from CutWire Studios — now on Android. It brings the speed and simplicity of modern creator tools to your phone: drop in clips, add effects and stickers, generate captions, and export — with no subscription, no watermark, and no account required.

This tree is the Android port of desktop Drift. Same engine and feature set, mobile-first UI. Built with Qt 6, QML, and FFmpeg. Preview and export share one compositor, so what you see is what you get.

Download

Stable release APKs are coming soon.

Pre-release CI builds (developers & testers only)

Unstable APKs from the Android workflow — for contributors and testers, not general use. Expect rough edges.

1. Open the Android workflow on GitHub Actions.
2. Pick a successful run on main (or your branch) where the release job finished (all ABIs built and signed).
3. Download the signed artifact — names look like drift-arm64-v8a-release-<sha> (use arm64-v8a on most phones).
4. Do not download artifacts named unsigned-*. Those will not install on a device.
5. Install the APK (you may need to allow installs from unknown sources).

You can also build from source and install with the deploy script below.

For the desktop builds (Linux, Windows, macOS), see CutWire-Studios/Drift.

Screenshots

New project — pick a layout, quality, and FPS, then import media or start blank

Preview, multi-track timeline, and edit / effects / audio / transitions tools

Add to timeline — media, text, captions, stickers, shapes

Effects — every preset previewed on a real frame

Transitions — drag one where two clips meet

Features

Feature parity with desktop Drift:

• Multi-track timeline — trim, split, snap, ripple, mute/hide tracks, and full undo/redo
• Effects & transitions — GPU effects, stylish transitions, and reusable look templates
• Stickers, emoji, titles & shapes — finish the look without leaving the editor
• Auto captions — speech-to-text captions you can edit on the timeline
• Cutouts & masks — isolate subjects, mask clips, and key out green screens
• Speed & motion — speed changes, reverse, fades, and animate to the beat of your music
• Audio tools — mixing, effect chain, and background noise cleanup
• Addons — optional fonts, stickers, effects, and speech models on demand
• Project bundles — package a project with its media for easy sharing and backup
• Export — MP4 (H.264 + AAC) that matches the preview, with quality presets

Requirements

Dependency	Notes
Host OS	Linux (scripts assume a Linux host)
Qt	6.11.1 Android kit + matching host tools (android_arm64_v8a / android_armv7 / android_x86_64 + gcc_64)
Android SDK	~/Android/Sdk (or ANDROID_SDK_ROOT)
NDK	27.2.12479018 — the version the Qt kit expects; do not mix NDK majors
CMake / Ninja	CMake ≥ 3.21, Ninja, host C++ toolchain
Java	JDK 17 (for the Android Gradle packaging step)
adb / apksigner	SDK platform-tools + build-tools, for install

Native libraries are not system packages on Android. FFmpeg, x264, zstd, OpenSSL, and SoundTouch are built once per ABI and cached under third_party/prebuilt/:

export ANDROID_NDK_ROOT=~/Android/Sdk/ndk/27.2.12479018
./third_party/build-android.sh arm64-v8a

scripts/build.sh runs this automatically when the prebuilts are missing.

ONNX Runtime powers auto-subtitles (and related ML features). Drift does not link it — only its headers are needed to build, and the library itself is an addon the user installs from the Acceleration category. Android builds set -DDRIFT_BUNDLE_ONNXRUNTIME=OFF; the runtime is never staged into the APK.

Nothing has to be placed by hand. Fonts, emoji stickers, and speech models are addons (see below), so a clone builds and runs with no bundled assets.

Optional: OpenCV for experimental background-removal builds (-DWITH_BGREMOVAL=ON). Only core, imgproc, and imgcodecs are linked.

Build

# Optional overrides:
#   QT_ANDROID_ROOT  QT_HOST_PATH  ANDROID_SDK_ROOT  ANDROID_NDK_ROOT

./scripts/build.sh              # arm64-v8a, RelWithDebInfo
./scripts/build.sh arm64-v8a Release
./scripts/build.sh armeabi-v7a
./scripts/build.sh x86_64

The unsigned APK lands under build/android-<abi>/android-build/.

Package identity defaults (org.cutwire.drift, app name, version code) can be overridden via DRIFT_ANDROID_PACKAGE_NAME, DRIFT_ANDROID_APP_NAME, and DRIFT_ANDROID_VERSION_CODE — CI uses this so debug APKs install alongside a release build.

Min SDK 28, target SDK 36.

Install on a device

# Signs with the Android debug keystore and adb install -r
./scripts/deploy.sh arm64-v8a

If packaging left a stale android-build/drift.apk, copy the fresh unsigned release APK there first:

cp build/android-arm64-v8a/android-build/build/outputs/apk/release/android-build-release-unsigned.apk \
   build/android-arm64-v8a/android-build/drift.apk
./scripts/deploy.sh arm64-v8a

Device self-test

Compositor smoke test on a connected device (no UI): push a project + media, composite one frame, pull selftest.png:

./scripts/selftest.sh project.dcut.json clip.mp4

Compare against a desktop renderframe of the same project when you have a host build available.

Addons

Fonts, emoji stickers, and speech models download at runtime rather than shipping in the APK. That keeps the install small and lets you take only what you need. Open the Addon Manager from the header, or follow the install prompt in the font picker, stickers tab, or auto-subtitle panel.

Packages are .driftpkg archives — zstd-compressed, Ed25519-signed, and verified before install — under the app’s addons directory. Format, registry, and installer live in src/engine/AddonPackage.*, src/engine/AddonRegistry.*, and src/models/AddonManager.*.

Effects and transitions are bundled and addons. They ship inside the APK so the editor works out of the box; effects.core / transitions.core addons can ship shader fixes without an app release. Content resolves highest-priority-first:

1. $DRIFT_*_DIR          developer override (host / debug)
2. installed addon       downloaded updates
3. bundled with the APK  effects, transitions, templates, audio-effects
4. app data location     hand-placed

Catalogs resolve duplicate ids first-root-wins, so an installed builtin.effects.gaussian_blur supersedes the bundled one. An addon cannot remove a bundled package — the bundled copy reappears when the addon no longer defines that id.

Opening a project that uses an effect or transition with no catalog entry reports it rather than silently dropping it from the render.

Pointing at a different service

The endpoint and client token are defined in CMakeLists.txt and injected as compile definitions — src/models/AddonEndpoint.h only reads them.

# Pass through qt-cmake / scripts/build.sh environment as needed:
cmake … -DDRIFT_ADDON_INDEX_URL=https://addons.example.com/v1/index \
        -DDRIFT_ADDON_CLIENT_TOKEN=your-token

cmake … -DDRIFT_ADDON_INDEX_URL=      # build with no addon service at all

With the service disabled the manager lists and installs nothing; already-installed, side-loaded, and override-dir content still work.

The token is not a secret — it ships in every binary. It exists so the bucket cannot be crawled or hotlinked.

These are CMake cache variables: changing the default in CMakeLists.txt does not affect an existing build directory, so pass -D... again or reconfigure from scratch.

Building and publishing addons lives in a separate repository, along with the Cloudflare Worker that serves them.

Project layout

src/
  core/           Domain model (Project, Track, Clip, Keyframe, Effect) — no GUI
  engine/         FFmpeg: ClipReader, FrameCompositor, AudioMixer, EffectProcessor, Exporter
  models/         QML-facing models: AppController, AssetLibrary, TimelineModel, ClipListModel
  playback/       PlaybackEngine, PlaybackClock, CompositorService
  preview/        PreviewItem (QQuickItem → QSGTexture)
  qml/            UI panels and components (mobile layout)
android/          Android package overlay (manifest, splash, icons)
scripts/          build.sh, deploy.sh, selftest.sh, icon helpers
third_party/      Android dependency build script (sources & prebuilts are gitignored)
effects/, transitions/, effect-templates/, audio-effects/
                  Bundled effect packs (also available as addons)
tests/            Unit tests (desktop / host builds — not part of the APK)
tools/            Headless probe + renderframe (host builds)
.github/          Android CI workflow
cmake/            Find modules and Android helpers

Releasing

Release APKs are not published yet — coming soon. The Android workflow already builds arm64-v8a, armeabi-v7a, and x86_64 on every push.

When tagging a release, bump project(Drift VERSION ...) in CMakeLists.txt and set DRIFT_ANDROID_VERSION_CODE so the store / sideload install path can upgrade cleanly.

Architecture (summary)

Unified frame server — Preview and export share FrameCompositor:

“Give me the composited RGBA frame + mixed audio at timeline time T (µs).”

Time model — Core timeline positions are int64_t microseconds (drift::TimeUs). QML uses seconds at the boundary via AppController.

Threading

Thread	Responsibility
Main (GUI)	QML, models, undo stack, playhead UI
Decode workers	ClipReaderPool — one thread per active media path
Compositor	CompositorService — frames off the GUI thread
Audio (pull)	Android audio output → PlaybackClock (audio-master)

Data flow (video)

Media file → ClipReader → EffectProcessor
          → FrameCompositor (transforms, blending, text, masks)
          → PreviewItem (QSGTexture)  |  Exporter

Data flow (audio)

Media file → ClipReader → AudioMixer (volume, fades, audio effects)
          → audio output  |  Exporter

QML entry points

Singletons registered in main.cpp:

• EditorState / AppController — timeline controller
• AssetLibrary — media bin

License

GPLv3 — see LICENSE.