How to add text to a video: free, on any phone or app

The free add text to video tool puts text on a video in your browser. The video is made on your device and never uploaded, there's nothing to sign up for, and the MP4 has no watermark.

1. Choose your video (MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV), or drop it on the player.
2. Type your text. It can run over several lines, and emoji work. You can add up to 6 texts: a title at the top and a label lower down, say.
3. Pick a style: Box (dark text on a white rounded box), Outline (white text with a black outline), Shadow (white text with a soft shadow) or Highlight (each line on its own colored band). Then choose the color, the font (Bold, Clean or Classic), the size, and left, center or right alignment.
4. Drag it into place on the preview. It snaps to the middle, and a guide shows where TikTok, Reels and Shorts put their buttons.
5. Set when it shows: for the whole video, or between two times you set.
6. Choose the shape: as it is, cropped to 9:16, fitted into 9:16 on a blurred copy of itself, or fitted on black, which leaves room for a title above the video.
7. Download the MP4, at its own size or at 1080 × 1920, with the sound kept.

It takes up to 30 minutes of video at a time, and making the file takes about as long as the video plays. If your video is horizontal, the shape step is where it becomes a vertical one; the vertical video converter does only that part, if you don't need text.

All of these put text on a video. They differ in where they run, whether you can choose when the text shows, and whether what comes out fills a phone screen at 9:16, the shape TikTok, Reels and Shorts are made for.

If the same video goes to all three apps, add the text once, before you upload, rather than three times in three editors. Each app's steps are below.

TikTok.

1. Tap Add post (+), record or upload, and open the editing tools: Edit on the side panel (after an upload, tap Next first).
2. Tap Text at the bottom, type, then tap the ✓ (Continue) button.
3. To set when it shows, hold and drag the arrow on either side of the text below the video track to make it shorter or longer. Hold the text itself to move it along the video.
4. Drag the text on the preview to place it. Tap it, then Copy, to duplicate it for a second line in the same style.

Instagram Reels.

1. Start a reel, record or choose a clip, then tap the text icon.
2. Type, then choose how the text is shown. Along the top are alignment, color, highlighting and animation; swipe up and down on the left for size, and left and right along the bottom for the font. Tap Done, then drag the text where you want it.
3. To change when it shows, tap Edit video: a timeline shows your text alongside your clips, and you can tap and hold the text to move it to another part of the reel.

Instagram's help for Reels doesn't describe changing how long text stays up. In Edits, Instagram's separate editing app, text is a clip on the timeline: tap and hold either end to change how long it appears.

YouTube Shorts.

1. Tap Create, then Short. Record or upload, then tap the check mark to edit.
2. Tap Text, type, and change the color, style and alignment.
3. Move it into place. As you drag, visual guides show where the like button, comments and description may appear, and animated white lines warn when it's too close to the edge.
4. To set when it shows, tap Edit (or swipe up) to open the timeline and drag the start and stop points of the text clip. Tap and hold text clips to reorder them, front to back.

iPhone. The Photos app can add text, but Apple's guide offers it for photos, not videos. For a video, use iMovie, Apple's free editing app:

1. Open a movie project, tap the clip in the timeline, then tap the Titles button and pick a title style.
2. Tap the sample title, then Edit, and type yours. Drag it to move it, and pinch it to make it bigger or smaller.
3. Use the Font and Color buttons to change how it looks, and Style to put it in the default position or as a lower third, toward the bottom.
4. Under More, turn on Text Shadow, Uppercase, or Full Clip Duration, which keeps the title on screen for the whole clip it's on.

A title belongs to one clip, so it shows over that clip. Apple's iMovie guide has no setting for a 9:16 project, so check the shape of what you export before you post it as a Short or a TikTok.

Android. Google Photos has a Text tool for videos. Open the video, tap Text, then Edit text to type; Fonts and Color change how it looks. Tap Text again to add another, tap a text box to edit it, or Delete to remove it, then Save to keep a copy of the video with your edits. Google's help page doesn't describe setting when the text appears.

CapCut. Open the Text panel, pick a style or template and click + to put the text on the timeline, then set its font, color, spacing and alignment. Each text sits on its own layer, so where that layer starts and ends on the timeline is when the text shows. The rest of making a clip in CapCut, from splitting to export, is in how to make clips in CapCut.

Every app lays its own buttons and text over your video: the username, caption and sound along the bottom, the like, comment and share buttons down the right, tabs or search across the top. Text underneath gets covered. None of the apps publishes exact margins, and they move a little between phones and app versions, so these are rounded and on the generous side, on a 1080 × 1920 video:

• Clear on all three: keep text inside the 820 × 1260 px area that starts 240 px from the top and 60 px from the left.
• A title goes just below the top margin, where it's the first thing read and stays clear of the face in most talking shots.
• Captions and labels go in the lower middle, above the bottom margin.
• Centre it. The right edge is busier than the left on all three apps, so if a line runs wide, nudge it left, not right.

The safe zone checker puts each app's layout over your own frame, so you can see what would be covered before you post. The add text tool shows the same guide while you drag, and YouTube's Shorts editor shows its own as you move text.

No app sets rules for this. These are our rules of thumb for text people read on a phone, at a glance:

• A few words. Three to seven words on one or two lines. If it needs a third line, it's a sentence, and it belongs in the post's caption.
• Big and heavy. Readable at arm's length on a small phone, in a thick, simple font. Thin and script fonts blur at that size.
• Contrast first. Over a busy picture, a style with its own background (a box or a colored band) stays readable anywhere. Outline and shadow styles work over calmer backgrounds.
• Long enough to read twice. A title that says what the clip is about can stay for the whole clip. A hook line that sets up the first sentence can go once the speaker gets going. A label, like a name or a step number, shows while it's true.
• One thing at a time. Don't stack a title on the captions or over the speaker's face.

Both are text on a video, and most clips want both. They do different jobs:

• A hook title is a few words you write, near the top, that say what the clip is about or why to keep watching. It stays still. The free hook generator gives you lines to start from, and short video hooks covers what makes one work.
• Captions are the spoken words, timed to the sound, a few at a time in the lower middle. Many people watch with the sound off, and captions are how they follow the clip. The free auto caption generator writes them from the speech, and add captions to video burns them in word by word.

Don't repeat the captions in the title: the title sets the clip up, the captions carry the speech. To do both for free, caption the video first, then add the title to the captioned MP4 with the add text tool. Styles, sizes and timing for captions are in how to caption short videos.

Typing a title takes a minute. With a clip cut from a long video, the time goes on everything before it: finding the moment worth posting, cutting it so it starts and ends on whole sentences, framing a 16:9 shot as 9:16 on whoever's talking, and captioning every word.

That's the part Clyper does. Paste a YouTube link or upload a video, and it reads the transcript to find the best moments, cuts each one on whole sentences, frames it 9:16 on whoever's talking and captions every word, as 1080 × 1920 MP4s with no watermark. It doesn't write titles or add title text: when the clips are done, put your own title on with the free add text tool, keeping the shape as it is. See YouTube to Shorts and animated captions for what comes out.