Drop in a vertical video and get captions drawn into the frames - styled, animated and timed to each word. The finished MP4 downloads straight to your device, cropped to 9:16 if the footage was shot wide.
Burned-in captions versus the Shorts caption track
YouTube can produce a caption track for a Short on its own, and that track is worth having - it is what a viewer using captions for accessibility will turn on, and it is text the platform can read. What it is not is something you control. It renders in YouTube's own style, at YouTube's size, and it shows only for the viewers who have captions switched on.
Captions drawn into the picture are the other half of that. They are visible to everyone from the first frame, in whatever style you set, and they cannot be turned off. Most short-form video carries them for that reason: a Short is usually watched muted and scrolled past in under a second, and words on screen are what stop the scroll.
The two are not exclusive. Export the captioned MP4 here, upload it to YouTube, and let YouTube generate its track on top - you get the styled words in the picture and an accessible caption track behind them.
One export, three platforms
A caption track belongs to the platform that made it. Download your own Short and re-upload it to TikTok or Reels and the captions do not come with it, because they were never in the file - you caption it again, in a second house style, and the series stops looking like a series.
Burned-in captions travel. The words are pixels in the frames, so the same export posts to Shorts, TikTok and Reels and looks identical on all three, survives a re-upload, and survives someone else reposting it.
Reframing footage that was not shot vertical
Footage in 16:9 can be cropped to 9:16, 1:1 or 4:5 before export, with zoom and position controls to bring the subject back into the frame. Choosing to fit rather than fill pads the gaps with a colour instead of cutting anything off, which is the usual choice for screen recordings and gameplay where the edges matter.
How to add captions to a YouTube Short
There are two routes and they answer different needs.
In YouTube Studio, open the video, go to Subtitles, and either edit the automatic track or upload one of your own. This gives you the toggleable caption track described above. It is free, it is good for accessibility and for search, and it does nothing for how the video looks in the feed.
To change how it looks, caption the file before it is ever uploaded, which is what this page does: drop the video in, the audio is transcribed with a timestamp on every word, you pick a style and adjust it, and what downloads is an MP4 with the captions already in the frames. Upload that to YouTube exactly as you would an uncaptioned file.
Captions in other languages
Captions can be generated in the language that is spoken or translated into any of the 76 supported ones. Scripts outside the Latin alphabet are handled properly: where a preset's typeface has no glyphs for Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, Thai or Korean, one that does is substituted automatically and the rest of the style - outline, highlight colour, animation - carries over unchanged.
Common questions
Does YouTube add captions to Shorts automatically?
It generates a caption track for most Shorts once the audio is in a language it recognises, and viewers can switch that track on or off. What it will not do is let you change how the words look, or put them on screen for viewers who have captions turned off. Both of those need the captions rendered into the video before it is uploaded.
Will burned-in captions stop YouTube generating its own?
No. YouTube transcribes the audio, not the picture, so it produces its caption track exactly as it would for an uncaptioned upload. That is usually what you want - the styled words carry the video in the feed, and the generated track keeps it accessible and readable to the platform.
Can I post the same file to TikTok and Reels?
Yes, and that is the main reason to caption before uploading rather than after. The captions are part of the picture, so one export goes to all three and looks the same on each.
What aspect ratio do I need?
9:16 is what Shorts fills the screen with. Footage shot in any other shape can be cropped to it here before export, with zoom and position controls, or padded to fit if cropping would cut something important.
Does the video get uploaded?
No. Only the audio track leaves your device, and only to be transcribed. The video is decoded, captioned and re-encoded in your browser, and the file you download is produced on your own machine.
Is it free?
Within a daily allowance: 3 videos of up to 60 seconds a day with no account, 5 with a free one. Longer Shorts or more of them need a plan, from 10 a month for 300 credits at 1 credit per minute.