How to add captions to a video automatically
Many people scroll through social media with the sound turned off. Captions let them follow your video anyway, and they make your content easier to understand for everyone, including people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Here's how to add them quickly.
Why captions matter
- Silent viewing: captions keep people watching even when their sound is off.
- Clarity: viewers catch every word, even with background noise or accents.
- Accessibility: captions make your videos usable for people who can't hear the audio.
- Attention: bold, animated words on screen help stop the scroll.
Automatic captions from speech
Postora can listen to your video and write the spoken words on screen for you. It uses a speech recognition model that runs inside your browser, so your video is not uploaded.
- Open the Video tool and choose your video.
- In the Add text step, find Auto text from speech.
- Choose the language (or let it detect automatically), how many words to show at once, and the quality.
- Press Generate text from audio. The first time, the speech model downloads once (about 40–80 MB). After that it starts faster.
- Check the lines it creates. You can edit any word or timing before you export.
Pick a caption style
Choose from more than 20 styles, including classic white text with an outline, bold yellow captions, word-by-word karaoke highlighting, boxed text, neon and more. You can drag the captions to any position on the video and change their size.
Adding text by hand
Prefer to write your own? Add a line of text, type what it should say, and set the start and end time. This is useful for titles, calls to action ("Link in bio") or short notes.
Tips for great captions
- Keep lines short: three to five words at a time are easy to read on a phone.
- Use high contrast: white text with a dark outline or box works on almost any background.
- Stay away from the edges: the bottom of the screen is often covered by the app's own buttons and descriptions, so place captions a little higher.
- Proofread: automatic captions are very good but not perfect, especially with names and brand words.
When you're happy, export the video. The captions are burned into the video, so they show up on every platform.