Add auto captions on TikTok before you post
- Record or upload the video — Open the app, tap the + button, and record in the camera or pick a video from your phone with Upload. Speak clearly and keep music low while someone is talking: the captions come from the recording's own audio, and every word the app mishears is one you will fix by hand.
- Tap Captions on the preview screen — After recording, or once you have chosen a video, TikTok opens the preview screen with a column of editing icons on the side; Captions is one of them, and it appears once the app has finished processing the video, so wait a moment if it is not there yet. Tap it. The first time, TikTok asks you to turn creator captions on; accept, and the transcription starts.
- Wait for the auto captions — The app transcribes the speech and lays the captions over the video. Play it through once and read along: names, brands, numbers and anything said over music are where auto captions slip, and this is the moment to fix them.
- Fix the words, then Post — Tap the pencil icon by the captions to open the text, correct any line and tap Save. Then tap Next, write the description and tap Post: the captions go out with the video as a separate layer that viewers can show or hide. On the post screen, More options, then Select video language, sets the language of TikTok's own auto-generated captions.
Fix mistakes before you post
Editing is what turns the automatic transcription into something viewers can rely on, and for the captions you turn on here it is only possible before you post: once the video is up, Edit post changes the description, hashtags and cover, not the caption text. The editor lists every caption line: fix the spelling of names and products, put back a number the app heard wrong, add the punctuation the app leaves out, and delete any filler. Do not rewrite what you said: captions that differ from the audio confuse lip-readers and anyone with the sound on. Keep lines short enough to read at speaking pace, and play the video once with the sound off, the way many viewers will watch, to see whether the captions carry it on their own.
Adding captions to a video you already posted
It depends on which captions. TikTok's own auto-generated captions are already on most posted videos with clear speech, and you can fix them in place: open your video in the app, tap the caption, tap Edit captions, correct or remove any line and tap Save at the top. What you cannot add after posting is the styled layer from the Captions button. If the original file is still on your phone, upload it again with Captions on, correct the text and post. When only the posted version exists, or you want captions styled your way, burn subtitles into the picture: get the transcript of the posted video with the tool below, download it as SRT, open the video in an editor that imports SRT files (CapCut, Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve all do), fix any misheard words, export, and post that video. Burned-in subtitles cannot be hidden or resized by viewers, but everyone sees them on every device, sound on or off.
Get the text of your video to reuse
This box does not add captions to a TikTok; only the app does that. What it gives you is the text of a video that is already up, with timestamps: download it as SRT to burn subtitles into a repost, or as TXT for a blog post or a description. Paste the link below, or use the TikTok transcript generator page; the TikTok video to text guide walks through the result page.
For viewers: turning captions on and off
Captions show on videos that have them: the creator's own, or TikTok's auto-generated ones on eligible videos. In the app, tap the Share button beside the video, then Captions in the bottom row (scroll across if you do not see it), and switch Show captions on or off; on tiktok.com, the ⋯ menu at the top of the player has a Captions entry. Tapping the caption itself expands it when a line is cut short. For a video that shows no captions, the box above still gives you the whole text with timestamps; it works for every public video.
Captions and reach: TikTok does not publish how captions affect distribution, so any percentage you see quoted is an estimate, not a measurement. What captions certainly change is who can follow the video: people watching with the sound off, deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, and non-native speakers. To learn what that does for your own account, compare the watch time and completion of a captioned and an uncaptioned video of the same kind in your analytics, and let that guide you.
Questions
- Why is the Captions button missing?
- Most often the app has not finished processing the video: the button appears once it has, so wait a moment and look again. The first time, TikTok asks you to turn creator captions on, so accept the prompt. If it never appears, the video may have no speech the app can detect, the language may be one TikTok does not cover, or the app is out of date.
- Which languages do auto captions support?
- TikTok keeps its own list, which grows over time. The captions you turn on with the Captions button are transcribed in the language the app detects; for TikTok's own auto-generated captions, you choose the language on the post screen under More options, then Select video language. If neither covers your language, the tool above still returns the text in the language spoken, ready to burn in as subtitles.
- Can I download my captions?
- TikTok offers no export for them. To get them as a file, paste your own video's link into the tool above: it reads the captions on the video (labelled Captions when they are the ones you turned on, Auto-generated when they are TikTok's own), and SRT or VTT gives you a subtitle file with the timing.
- Do captions help reach?
- Nobody outside TikTok can say by how much, and TikTok publishes no figure. What is certain is that a video more people can follow is one more people can finish and share, and that accurate captions help while wrong ones distract, which is why the editing step matters.
- How do I make the caption text bigger?
- As a viewer, tap the caption: it expands to show more of the text at once. As a creator, the captions editor lets you change the font style and colour of the captions you turn on; for big, styled words on screen, add the key lines with the Text tool alongside the captions, or burn in subtitles of your own as described above.