How to add Captions on TikTok
May 19, 202215 mins read
Did you know that TikTok has introduced auto-captions on TikTok videos intending to make its popular video-sharing app more accessible for people who face different disabilities in their lives. There are two ways on how you can add captions to TikTok videos. You can auto-generate subtitles for videos that allow your viewers to read what has been said in the video. The other way is to get auto subtitle generation tools to create captions and subtitles with 120 different languages, 99% accuracy, endless video editing, and customization features.
There are likely more chances of increased outreach and accessibility if you add captions on TikTok videos as 80% of viewers said they watch entire video with captions.
TikTok content creators can enable or disable auto caption on TikTok videos with a single tap and edit the caption’s text if needed. Moreover, TikTok viewers can hide or display auto-captions on videos. Adding subtitles on TikTok videos can reduce your efforts to enhance your videos’ outreach.
Related: How to turn on captions on TikTok
1. Add auto-captions to TikTok via TikTok Built in feature
If you are a TikTok content creator and want to add captions to TikTok videos, here is a straightforward way to do so. Simply follow these steps mentioned below:
- Upload your video and tap to enable video editing mode.
- Once you have turned on the video editing mode, tap on the Captions options on the right side of the screen to enable captions.
- TikTok will auto generate captions for your video based on your audio.
- TikTok does not offer an auto-correction feature, so you have to correct all the words manually through the pencil icon and then tap Save.
- Once you have saved the captions after ensuring they are accurate and ready to go, you can go to the next page by tapping the Post to publish.
It is essential to know that adding auto-captions to your TikTok videos can take a few moments, depending on the length of your video. Moreover, only the spoken words will be captioned, and it will not translate the music.
TikTok’s auto-captions are convenient but there is a high chance of inaccuracy especially with accents, background noise. Therefore, requiring you to edit even the simplest lines for right captions. Additionally, this feature is not suitable for mixed language content or non-english content. often inaccurate, especially with slang, accents, or background noise, requiring manual edits.
If you want to add more words and captions to your videos, you must do it manually.
2. Add Captions Manually on TikTok
- Open TikTok and upload your video: Record a video or upload one from your gallery.
- Tap the checkmark (✔️): After recording or selecting your video, tap the checkmark to enter the editing screen.
- Add a text overlay: Tap the “Text” button (which looks like a capital “Aa”) at the bottom of the screen.
- Type your captions: Type the text you want to display as captions. You can format the text by choosing different fonts, colors, alignments, and styles.
- Position and time your captions: Drag the text to position it anywhere on the screen. To time your captions, tap the text and then select “Set duration.” Use the timeline slider to decide when your captions will appear and disappear.
- Repeat for additional captions: Repeat the steps for each line of text or caption you want to add.
Manually adding captions on TikTok is time-consuming, requires precise timing, and increases the risk of typos or errors as you have to type everything yourself. It lacks advanced customization and automation, making it less professional and harder to reuse captions. For efficiency and accessibility, consider using TikTok’s auto-captions or third-party tools like SubtitleBee.
How to turn off auto caption on TikTok videos for viewers?
Without any doubt, the captions and subtitles help people in their daily lives differently. However, TikTok offers turn-off auto-captions on the TikTok videos feature; if you prefer watching content without captions, you can disable them.
Follow the following steps to disable auto caption on TikTok videos.
- When watching a TikTok video, tap on one of the captions as it pops up on the screen.
- Click on the small bubble that will appear above or below the caption. The auto caption will disappear behind a small text Box.
- Later, tap on the auto caption or tap on hide captions, whatever you prefer. You can’t reenable auto-captions while tapping on a small textbook video indicating captions are available.
3. Embed Captions to Tiktok Videos using Third party tool
SubtitleBee stands out as a premier AI video caption generator for video, renowned for its high accuracy and extensive language support. It automatically generates subtitles with a remarkable 95% accuracy, ensuring that your videos are accessible to a global audience. This platform supports over 120 languages, including major ones like English, German, French, and more exotic languages such as Turkish and Dutch, making it an invaluable tool for content creators targeting diverse audiences.
Simply follow these steps to add accurate captions to TikTok videos:
- Go to SubtitleBee and tap on “Start for free” button.
- Upload your video. It will take just a few moments.
- The video with captions is ready and the subtitles file will be sent to your email.
Edit any required changes to the subtitles.
Overlay any text on any duration with Supertitles. Make big captions on TikTok video using Supertitles.
Resize the video to TikTok
Export the subtitled video
Upload the video to TikTok
It is the most intelligent subtitle generating tool that picks the words even with a little noisy background. Check out their price plan, and they are significantly cheaper and have multiple unique features.
What are the benefits of adding captions to TikTok videos?
TikTok has 1.1 billion active users worldwide, and it’s growing faster than ever before. The 15 seconds to 3-minute videos are helping individuals and businesses engage in a most fun way of spreading information.
Most content creators and business product marketers prefer to promote their products on TikTok by making shorter videos, recorded or live streaming. Undoubtedly, TikTok hosts a more excellent avenue of opportunities for businesses to generate increased revenue and get higher conversion by making efforts on TikTok.
Businesses go for TikTok because it offers many online video-making, promotion, and marketing through short video ads, branded hashtags, video filters, and effects. To add more value to TikTok content, brand managers and content creators can improve their content’s reachability and accessibility by offering close captions and subtitles on TikTok videos.
Improved reachability and social media engagements
Video content will continue to thrive in the digital world like never before. This is why businesses and brand ambassadors are putting a significant emphasis on creating valuable video content to meet the demands and expectations of their users. The longer you continue to put off video content to promote your product, the more difficult it would turn to compete with the ever-changing, ever-challenging world. This is also one of the reasons video content plays as essential role as digital transformation to grow your business and survive in post-pandemic uncertain years.
Therefore, businesses should start shooting as much valuable video content as possible. With ever-evolving technology, video content making has become seamless job than ever.
Video content has more engagement than any other format on every social media platform. TikTok offers a more significant engagement level than any other leading social media platform. To get more fruitful results on your quality-oriented content, add captions on TikTok videos to offer your audience a greater viewing experience, listening, and reading experience.
Moreover, add captions on TikTok videos to increase reachability and improve search engine optimization endeavors on your content. Captions also increase comprehension while ensuring that your audience is engaged and enjoys your content.
Great accessibility feature
Although TikTok is gaining fame day-by-day, accessibility on TikTok, it’s still a significant matter of concern. TikTok is working to reduce roadblocks for people with disabilities through SDH subtitles Still, it has a long way to go to work on navigation, information hierarchy, layout, and overall design to increase accessibility and improve user experience.
Moreover, the unfamiliar patterns and pathways within the TikTok app are also a significant barrier for many users. To overcome the accessibility barriers, it is recommended that content creators and product promoters to add captions on TikTok videos to make users’ watching experience memorable.
Accessible format and design fonts
One of the easiest ways to work is by adding beautiful design, formation, fonts, endless customizations, and extensively edited videos; you can enhance your users’ watching experience. When adding captions on TikTok videos, it is necessary to use appropriate colors, contrasts, font sizes, font styles, and text placement if you are using different languages altogether. Never use text colors that have low vision or color deficiencies.
You should use efficient contrast, such as using a light-colored font with a black background is typically the most available option. However, you can use deeper colors such as blue and green to be incorporated with lighter stages.
As for the font sizes and styles, you should pay close attention to the sizing of text and style. The font size should not be too small for people with low vision. It would be very difficult for them to read out the text. Use the fonts that increase the readability, such as Sans-serif font and classic or traditional fonts.
Moreover, when you are ready to place your text on the video, make sure the correct position on the screen. It’s not compulsory to add captions at the bottom of the screen; you can use them anywhere to increase readability and watching experience. You can use different catchy colors to overlap the text.
Usage of audio descriptions
TikTok is a 100% visual app. It can be a more significant challenge for people who are blind or have low vision, are color blind, or have many challenges seeing the content. Make sure you use audio at the right frequency, cohesion, and clarity. If you are not comfortable adding your voice, you can take the help of auto voice generating tools to add the most human-like ways to your videos in a few minutes.
When it comes to accessibility adding the most human-like, catching, and beautiful voice can increase its chances for more outreach and promotion of valuable content. After video content, audio content is the next big hit. Later you can use this voice to repurpose your content for different social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Podcast channels.
Its a wrap up
Add captions on TikTok videos is something you cannot avoid any longer. If you are serious about brand building, product promotion, and sending out valuable content to your viewers and buyers, you should start using AI-based caption generating tools.
Using auto-captions on TikTok is good but it’s not the ultimate answer when it comes to promoting the valuable message of your brand. Therefore, the experts recommend automatic subtitle generator to businesses and content creators to get multi-dimensional benefits at cheaper prices. Video making on TikTok has become a few clicks phenomena with more accuracy, customization, creativity, and accessibility features. But with subtitle generating tools it has become a more hassle free job than ever before.
Related Read: How to turn off captions on TikTok
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is a TikTok video caption?
A TikTok video caption is the text description that a creator adds to their video. This caption appears at the bottom and can include hashtags, mentions, and a brief description or context for the video content.
What are TikTok auto captions?
TikTok auto captions are a feature that automatically generates text captions for spoken words in a video. It helps make content more accessible to viewers who are hard of hearing. TikTok uses speech recognition technology to transcribe the audio into text.
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