How to add a watermark to a video (your handle or logo)

The free add watermark to video tool puts your name or logo on a video in your browser. The video is made on your device, so nothing is uploaded, and there's no sign-up and no watermark of its own.

1. Open your video (up to 30 minutes), or try the example first.
2. Add text, an image, or both: your @handle or name, and your logo. A PNG with a transparent background works best for a logo, so it sits on the picture without a box around it.
3. Place it in one of 9 spots, or drag it where you want it. On a vertical video, the areas the apps' buttons cover are shaded, so you can keep it clear of them.
4. Set its size and how see-through it is. Readable, but never the first thing anyone looks at.
5. Let it move, if you want it hard to crop out: it jumps to another corner every few seconds.
6. Download the MP4, at the video's own size, with its sound.

For a title or a hook rather than a credit, use add text to video, which styles text the way clips are. The rest of this guide is the thinking behind those steps: what a watermark is for, what to put in it, where, how big, and whether it should move.

A watermark is credit that travels with the video. Short clips get reposted: downloaded, screen-recorded, posted to another app or stitched into a compilation. The caption, the username and the link stay behind. The only thing that goes everywhere the video goes is what's in the picture.

• People can find you. Someone who sees your clip on a page that took it can still search your @handle.
• It shows the clip is yours. When the same video turns up on two accounts, the one with your mark on it points back to you.
• It marks drafts and previews. Work you send a client before they pay, or footage you sell, can carry a watermark until the final, clean file is delivered.

What a watermark can't do:

• Stop someone determined. A corner mark can be cropped off, blurred or covered with a sticker in seconds. It makes taking the clip a little harder and crediting you a little easier; that's all.
• Make you the owner. Copyright doesn't come from a watermark; it generally belongs to whoever made the work. And your watermark on someone else's video doesn't make it yours: if you clip other creators, the rules are in is clipping legal?

It does have some legal weight in the US. Copyright law protects “copyright management information”, which includes the name of the author or owner conveyed with a copy of a work, and bars removing it on purpose knowing that will help an infringement or hide one (17 U.S.C. § 1202). Whether a particular watermark counts is for courts, not this guide.

The best watermark answers one question for someone who's never heard of you: where do I find more of this? That's usually your @handle.

Keep it to one line, in a plain, bold font, in white or a light color with a soft shadow so it reads on dark and bright shots alike. For a logo, use a PNG with a transparent background, and a simplified version if the full logo has fine detail: at watermark size, thin lines and small text disappear.

TikTok, Reels and Shorts lay their buttons, the username, the caption and the sound over the video. A watermark under them is hidden on the screen where most people will see it. None of the apps publishes exact margins, and they move a little between phones and app versions, so our safe zone checker uses rounded, generous ones. To be clear on all three on a 1080 × 1920 video, stay 240 pixels from the top, 420 from the bottom, 60 from the left and 200 from the right (YouTube Shorts' buttons need the most room on the right):

Two more rules: never over a face, and never where the captions go (the lower middle). Check the finished video in the safe zone checker before you post. The sizes and safe zones for each app are in video sizes for TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

A watermark should be readable when someone looks for it and easy to ignore when they don't. Our rule of thumb, not a standard, for a 1080 × 1920 video:

• Text about 36 to 48 pixels tall, roughly the size of the app's own username line. Bigger competes with the captions; smaller vanishes on a phone.
• A logo about 120 to 180 pixels wide, a little more than a tenth of the width.
• 60 to 80% opaque (20 to 40% see-through). Fully solid draws the eye; much fainter disappears on a bright shot.
• Bigger and fainter for drafts. A preview mark meant to stop use can be large and in the middle, at 30 to 50%.

A watermark that sits in one corner for the whole video is easy to remove: crop that edge off, or blur one spot. A watermark that moves is harder. If it jumps to another corner every few seconds, there's no single strip to crop and no single spot to blur, so taking it out means cropping every side or covering it again and again.

Turn on moving in the free tool and it moves to another corner every few seconds. Use it where reposting is likely: clips that are already being taken by repost pages, footage you sell, previews you send before you're paid. The cost is attention: a mark that moves is more noticeable than one that stays put, so make it smaller and more see-through than a fixed one.

For everyday posts, a fixed mark in the top left is enough, and TikTok and Instagram already put a watermark of their own on videos saved from them (more on that below).

If you're editing the video anyway, your editor can add the watermark. Here's each one, as its maker describes it:

YouTube's watermark is different: YouTube shows it over your videos rather than putting it into the file. The image has to be square, at least 150 × 150 pixels and under 1 MB, and you choose when it shows: End of video (the last 15 seconds), a Custom start time, or the Entire video. YouTube says it shows in landscape view on computers and mobile devices, and isn't clickable on mobile; subscriptions that come from it show in the Subscription source report in YouTube Analytics. It's set on a computer, isn't available on videos made for kids, and YouTube's page doesn't mention Shorts, so put your handle in the video itself for those.

Watch for watermarks you didn't add. CapCut says it doesn't add a watermark to exports itself, but most of its templates end with a short clip carrying the CapCut logo: tap that ending clip and delete it before you export.

The apps care about watermarks, mostly other apps' ones. Here's what each says, in its own words:

• TikTok keeps “reused or unoriginal content posted without creative edits, such as clips that show someone else's watermark or logo” out of the For You feed, under its Community Guidelines (in effect since September 24, 2026). Its Creator Rewards Program doesn't count content “copied completely from others and with others' watermarks” as original.
• Instagram's Help Center lists reels that “contain borders, logos, or watermarks” among those you may see less often, without saying whose. Its creators' FAQ is more specific: “the 3rd party watermark on your reel may be impacting its reach.” And in April 2026 it said adding a watermark or a credit to someone else's reel doesn't make it original.
• YouTube's monetization policies, reused content included, don't mention watermarks.

So nothing in TikTok's or YouTube's rules counts against your own small handle. On Instagram, keep it small and faint, or post the clean version there: Instagram already shows your username on the reel, and its own words don't rule out your mark counting against you.

Post the original file, not a download. TikTok and Instagram stamp videos saved from them: TikTok says it doesn't support downloading videos without watermarks, and Instagram says downloaded reels include an Instagram watermark and your username. YouTube said in August 2022 that Shorts creators download from YouTube Studio would carry a watermark; its current help page on downloads doesn't mention one either way. Post a saved copy to another app and it can carry the first app's logo, exactly what TikTok and Instagram show less. Keep the clean export, add your own mark if you want one, and post that everywhere. How to post one video to every app is in how to cross-post short videos.

Clips are where watermarks get tested most, because clips are what get reposted. Clyper exports every clip as a 1080 × 1920 MP4 with no watermark of its own: it finds the best moments in a long video, cuts each on whole sentences, frames it 9:16 on whoever's talking and captions every word. Add your handle to the finished clips with the free tool, or post them clean.