What is a text hook?

On TikTok, Reels and Shorts, people decide in a moment whether to stay or swipe, often before the speaker's first sentence has landed. YouTube measures exactly that moment: its Shorts analytics show Stayed to watch, the percentage of times viewers stayed past the initial seconds of a Short. Your hook rate is the same idea on any app.

A text hook works on that moment in three ways:

• It reaches people on mute. A spoken hook only works on viewers who can hear it.
• It's there on the first frame, readable before anyone has heard a word.
• It sets up a slow start. A clip that opens on context reads differently under “How he landed his first client”.

It isn't the same as the other text on a clip. The captions are the spoken words, timed to the voice; the post caption is the text under the video. The text hook is the line on the picture that sets the clip up, and it's usually gone once the speaker gets going.

• A few words. Readable in a second, on one or two lines. Clyper shrinks a long headline's text rather than let it run down the screen.
• At the top, below the apps' top bar. The top of a 1080 × 1920 video sits under each app's tabs and search (TikTok 160 px, Instagram Reels 220 px, YouTube Shorts 240 px, by our safe zone margins). Clyper sets its headline's top 300 px down, below all three, and on a stream clip moves it under the webcam so it doesn't cover the face.
• On for the opening. Long enough to read twice, then out of the way. Clyper's stays for the first 4 seconds and fades out.
• A promise the clip keeps. People who feel tricked swipe before the end.
• Not the first spoken line. The text sets the clip up and the voice delivers it. If the speaker opens with “I spent three years building the wrong thing”, the text can say what the clip is about: “The question that would have saved me 3 years”.

The types that work are the same as for any hook: curiosity, a number, the result first, a warning, a hot take. Templates for each are in short video hooks, and the free hook generator fills 48 formulas with your topic, from story, advice, hot take, funny, curiosity and numbers angles.

• Repeating the captions. Two lines saying the same thing at once is one too many.
• Covering the face or the captions. The hook goes above the speaker, the captions below.
• Clickbait. A hook the clip doesn't pay off only moves the swipe a few seconds later, and the comments will say so.
• The same hook on every clip. “Wait for it” on ten clips in a row tells people nothing about any of them.

To test one, post two clips with different text hooks and compare the first-seconds numbers rather than the views, which depend on far more than the hook. On YouTube Shorts that's Stayed to watch; see swipe-away rate.