How to Add Captions to TikTok, Reels and Shorts

Most short videos are watched with the sound off: on the bus, in bed, in a quiet office. Without captions, a talking video is just a person moving their mouth, and viewers scroll on within a second or two. Captions also make your videos usable for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they help when your audio isn’t perfect.

Every big platform now has some kind of built-in captioning. This guide walks through each one, explains the difference between captions viewers can switch off and captions burned into the picture, and shows how to make one captioned video you can post everywhere.

Two kinds of captions

Closed captions are stored separately from the video. The app shows them on top, and viewers can usually turn them on or off. Platforms generate them automatically, and their look is decided by the app, not by you.

Burned-in (open) captions are drawn into the picture itself. They can’t be switched off, but they look exactly how you designed them, on every app, and they survive downloads, reposts and screen recordings. That is why most short-form creators burn in big, bold captions that are part of the video’s style.

Many creators do both: burned-in captions for style and attention, plus the app’s automatic captions turned on for accessibility settings.

Option 1: TikTok’s built-in captions

TikTok can transcribe your video for you. After recording or uploading, look for Captions among the editing tools on the right of the editor. TikTok generates the text, lets you correct words, and shows the captions to viewers, who can hide them. TikTok’s menus change often, so if you can’t find the option, check the editing tools after you tap the next arrow, or look in the post settings for automatic captions.

The built-in captions are quick and free, but you get TikTok’s style only, and they don’t travel with the video if you post it elsewhere.

Option 2: Instagram Reels captions

Instagram offers a captions sticker in the Reels editor: open the sticker tray and choose the captions option. It transcribes your speech into an on-screen sticker with a handful of styles, and you can tap to fix words. Instagram can also generate automatic captions that viewers switch on in their settings. As with TikTok, the exact menu names move around between app versions.

The sticker counts as part of the Reel inside Instagram, but if you download the Reel or post the original file to another app, the captions aren’t included.

Option 3: YouTube Shorts captions

YouTube automatically generates captions for many uploads, including Shorts, once processing finishes. Viewers turn them on with the captions button. In YouTube Studio you can review and correct the automatic captions, or upload your own subtitle file, which replaces them. If names or brand words keep coming out wrong, uploading a corrected file is the reliable fix. Our guide to SRT and VTT files explains which format to upload.

The Shorts editor itself focuses on text, music and filters, so for styled on-screen captions most creators add them before uploading.

Option 4: Burn styled captions in once, post everywhere

If you post the same video to TikTok, Reels and Shorts, captioning it three times in three apps is slow, and each app’s version looks different. Burning the captions in once gives you one file that looks the same everywhere.

With ClipCocoon’s Auto Captions you can do that in your browser on any computer or phone:

1. Open the tool and add your video. The first time, it asks before loading its speech model to your browser; after that it starts straight away.
2. The tool writes the captions with a timing for every word. Click any word to fix it, and use Find & replace for names you say often.
3. Pick a style (Bold pop, Karaoke, Classic, Boxed, Outline or Minimal), a font, the number of words per caption, the size, position and colors.
4. Turn on the safe-area guide and move the captions above the area each app covers with buttons and text.
5. Export the video, and download an SRT file too if you want to upload it as YouTube captions.

Your video is processed on your own device, so nothing is uploaded until you post it yourself. Captions are English only for now.

Tips for captions people actually read

• Keep lines short. Two to four words per caption is easy to read at a glance; one word at a time feels fast and energetic. Long sentences across the screen get skipped.
• Mind the safe area. TikTok, Reels and Shorts cover the bottom of the screen with your username and description, and the right side with like and share buttons. Captions placed around the middle or just above the lower third stay visible.
• Go big and high-contrast. White text with a dark outline or a solid box stays readable over any background. Thin, small text disappears on a phone.
• Highlight the spoken word. A highlighted current word helps viewers follow along and keeps their eyes on the video.
• Proofread names and numbers. Automatic captions are good, but names, brands and slang are where they slip. One read-through before posting avoids embarrassing typos.
• Cut the pauses first. Captions on a tight edit read better. Remove the silences before captioning, and if your footage is landscape, make it vertical before adding captions, so the cropping doesn’t cut them off.

Which option should you choose?

If you only post to one app and like its look, the built-in captions are the fastest route. If you post to several apps, want your own style, or want captions that stay with the video wherever it goes, burn them in once. For long YouTube videos and anything where accessibility matters most, add a subtitle file as well, so viewers can turn captions on in their language settings.