In this guide
The 30-second answer
Open your project, tap the Captions tool, and let Edits transcribe your spoken audio automatically. Read through the generated text, fix any misheard words, pick a style that stays readable over your footage, then export. The captions are burned into the video, so they show up everywhere the video plays — even with the sound off.
Captions are the single highest-value edit you can make to a talking-head video. A large share of viewers watch with the sound off at first, and captions are what keep them watching long enough to turn it on. They also make your videos accessible to viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they help anyone watching in a noisy room or a quiet office. The good news is that Edits does the hard part — transcription — for you. Your job is quality control: checking the words, styling them, and placing them where they never get covered up.
Turn on automatic captions
Start with a project that already has the clips you want to caption. Captions are generated from the audio on your timeline, so finish your basic trimming and splitting first — every cut you make after generating captions can shift the timing and force you to re-check the whole transcript.
- Open the project and tap the clip or clips that contain speech. If your video has several speaking sections, captions can cover the whole timeline at once; you do not need to caption clip by clip.
- Find the Captions tool. Look in the editing toolbar for the captions or text option. The exact icon can move between app versions, so if you do not see it immediately, check the tools menu or the overlay options for your selected clip.
- Choose the spoken language. Pick the language actually spoken in the video. This is the step people skip most often, and it is the biggest cause of garbled transcripts — the app can only transcribe accurately when it knows which language to listen for.
- Generate the captions. Confirm, and let the app process the audio. For a short video this takes seconds; a longer video may take a minute or two. Keep the app open while it works.
- Watch the first pass. Play the video from the start and read along. Do not trust the transcript blindly — automatic transcription is good, but names, slang, brand terms, and accented speech are exactly where it stumbles.
If the Captions tool is missing entirely, first check that your app is up to date and that the clip actually contains an audio track. A muted clip, a clip with the audio stripped out, or a project made only of still images will give the tool nothing to transcribe. The updates page notes when features move or roll out to more accounts.
Fix the words the app got wrong
Budget real time for this step. A transcript that is 95 percent right still reads as sloppy when the wrong 5 percent includes your name, your product, or your call to action. Work through the video in order, and fix problems as you find them rather than jumping around.
- Tap a caption line to edit it. The text becomes editable, and you can correct spelling, add missing words, or delete words the app hallucinated from background noise.
- Fix names and terms first. Your name, your handle, product names, and place names are the words viewers notice most. If the app keeps mishearing a word, type it exactly as you want it read and move on.
- Add punctuation. Automatic transcripts often come out as one long run of words. Add periods, commas, and question marks where you naturally paused. Punctuation is what turns a wall of text into something a viewer can follow at a glance.
- Split long lines. If a single caption stays on screen for a whole sentence, break it into two shorter lines that change as you speak. Viewers read captions in chunks, and short lines are much easier to follow than long ones.
- Delete captions over silence. Pauses, laughter, and background noise sometimes produce stray words. Remove any caption that does not match something actually said.
A useful habit: read the captions out loud while the video plays. If you stumble reading a line, your viewers will stumble too. Reword it until it reads smoothly, even if that means the caption is not a word-for-word transcript. Clear captions beat literal captions.
Style captions so people actually read them
Style is not decoration — it is readability. A caption that blends into a bright background or sits behind the app’s interface is a caption that does not exist. Choose a look, then test it against your actual footage, not against a blank preview.
- Pick a clean font. A bold, simple sans-serif reads best at small sizes on a phone screen. Decorative or thin fonts look nice in the preview and disappear over busy footage.
- Size for phones, not desktops. Captions are read on a phone held at arm’s length. If you have to squint in the preview, your viewers will too. Go one size larger than feels necessary.
- Use contrast, not just color. White text with a dark background box, or text with a strong outline, stays readable over both bright and dark footage. A color that looks great over your intro may vanish over a white wall later in the video.
- Keep the position consistent. Captions usually sit near the bottom of the frame, but not so low that Instagram’s interface covers them. Leave a margin above the bottom edge for the caption bar, like button, and description area. Do not move captions around mid-video unless you have a reason — viewers learn where to look.
- Match your other text. If you also use on-screen titles, keep the caption style distinct from them. The text and titles guide covers how to make titles stand out without clashing with captions.
One style decision to make early: word-by-word highlighting versus full-line captions. Word highlighting looks modern and helps viewers track fast speech, but it can feel frantic on slow, thoughtful videos. Full lines are calmer and easier to skim. Pick the one that matches your video’s pace and stick with it.
Control timing and line breaks
Good caption timing is invisible — the words appear exactly when they are spoken and change the moment the thought changes. Bad timing is immediately noticeable, and it makes even accurate text feel wrong.
When a caption lingers after you have moved on, or appears before you start speaking, adjust its start and end points on the timeline. Most timing problems come from two causes: a clip that was trimmed after captions were generated, and long pauses that the app grouped into a single caption. Both are fixed by splitting the caption at the pause and re-aligning each half.
For line breaks, follow a simple rule: break lines at natural pauses, not in the middle of a phrase. “I started this channel / because I love cooking” reads well. “I started this / channel because I love cooking” forces the viewer to hold half a thought while waiting for the rest. Aim for one complete idea per line, and no more than two lines on screen at once.
Reading speed matters too. A good target is roughly two to three words per second on screen. If a caption flashes by faster than you can read it aloud, split it or give it more time. If you speak very quickly, consider trimming filler words from the audio first — captions cannot fix a pace that is too fast to follow.
Export with captions burned in
Edits burns captions into the exported video, which means they become part of the picture itself. That is usually what you want: the captions show up on Instagram, TikTok, and anywhere else you post the file, with no extra settings needed. But it also means you cannot remove or restyle them after export, so do your final check before you export, not after.
- Play the whole video once through. Watch it on your phone, not just in the editor preview, and read every caption. This is your last chance to catch a typo.
- Check the edges. Confirm no caption is cut off by the frame edge or hidden behind on-screen interface elements.
- Export at your usual settings. The export settings guide covers resolution and quality — captions stay sharp as long as you export at full resolution.
- Re-watch the exported file. Open the finished video in your camera roll and skim it. If a caption looks blurry or misplaced, it is almost always an export resolution issue, not a caption issue.
If you plan to post the same video with platform captions as well, turn one of them off. Double captions — burned-in text plus the platform’s own auto-captions stacked on top — look messy and confuse viewers. Since Edits captions are styled and timed by you, they are usually the better choice.
Fix common caption problems
Captions are missing entirely. Check that the clip has audible speech, that you selected the right language, and that the caption layer is enabled and not hidden behind another layer. If the tool generated nothing, try generating again on a single clip to rule out a project-level glitch.
The transcript is in the wrong language. Delete the captions, set the language to the one actually spoken, and regenerate. Editing a wrong-language transcript word by word is almost never worth it.
Captions drift out of sync. This usually follows an edit made after generation. Regenerate the captions for the affected section, or nudge the caption timings to match the new cuts. To avoid it, finalize your cuts before you caption.
Captions are too small or hard to read. Increase the size and add a background or outline. If the problem only appears after posting, check your export resolution — low-resolution exports soften small text first.
Words are wrong only for one speaker. Accents, quiet voices, and overlapping speech all reduce accuracy. For a section the app cannot handle, type the captions manually for just that part rather than fighting the automatic transcript.
Frequently asked questions
Are captions in Edits free?
Yes. Automatic captions are part of the free Edits app. You do not need a subscription to generate, edit, or export captioned video.
Can I add captions to a video with no speech?
Automatic captions need spoken audio to transcribe. For a music-only video, you can still add manual text lines with the text tool — but there is nothing for the transcriber to work from, so you would be typing them yourself.
Do captions affect how Instagram ranks my video?
Instagram has never confirmed captions as a ranking factor, but captioned videos hold attention longer, especially from viewers watching on mute — and watch time is what matters. Treat captions as a retention tool, not a ranking trick.
Can I remove captions after exporting?
No. Burned-in captions are part of the video image. Keep your Edits project saved so you can re-export without captions if you ever need a clean version.
Should I use Edits captions or Instagram’s auto-captions?
Use one, not both. Edits captions give you control over wording, style, and timing before you post, which is why most creators prefer them. Instagram’s auto-captions are a decent fallback if you forgot to caption in the editor.