How to add subtitles to a TikTok video

TikTok captions or burned-in subtitles?

TikTok can generate captions on its own, and viewers can switch them off. That is fine for a quick post, but you do not control the wording, the timing or the look, and the captions stay on TikTok.

Burned-in subtitles are drawn into the video itself. They look the same everywhere the video goes — TikTok, Reels, Shorts, a download — and they are the only option when you want a translation or a specific style. The trade-off is that viewers cannot turn them off, so they need to be right before you export.

Keep captions inside the safe area

TikTok overlays its interface on the video: the caption and sound name along the bottom, and the like, comment and share buttons down the right edge. Text placed there is partly hidden.

A reliable rule is to keep subtitles in the middle band of the frame — above the bottom fifth of the screen and clear of the right-hand column of buttons. Centred text a little below the middle of the frame is readable on every phone size.

Write for a phone screen

A vertical frame is narrow, so lines that would fit on a laptop wrap awkwardly on a phone. Aim for short captions of one or two lines, and break them where a speaker naturally pauses.

• Keep each line to roughly 20–30 characters on a vertical video — about half that in Chinese, Japanese or Korean.
• Show each caption for at least about a second, even for a single word.
• Split a long sentence across two captions rather than squeezing it into three lines.
• Cut filler words ("um", "you know") unless the hesitation is the point.

Doing it with SubFlow

Upload the video file, and SubFlow transcribes the speech into timed captions. If you want the subtitles in another language, choose a target language and each caption is translated in context, shown beside the original.

In the editor you can fix wording, split a caption that runs long, or merge two short ones. Then export a video with the subtitles burned in, ready to post. On Android the whole thing happens on the phone — only the audio is uploaded for transcription, and the subtitled video is rendered on the device.

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