Captions for YouTube, Shorts, TikTok and Reels

Do both. Burn captions into the picture where they carry emphasis, and upload a separate caption file as well so the text is accurate, searchable and can be turned off. That is what people running large channels actually do, and it takes about two minutes more than doing one.

Then proofread the proper nouns. Auto-generated captions are good enough to publish only after somebody has checked the names and the jargon, which is exactly the vocabulary they get wrong.

How many people are actually reading them

This is the number that settles whether captions are worth the effort. From r/PartneredYoutube: "Around 30-40% of my viewers watch with subtitles on so yes I make sure they are there and are accurate, which also has the double effect of"

A third of your audience is not a rounding error. It also explains why the accuracy matters more than the existence: for those viewers the captions are the video, and a garbled name is a garbled video.

Creators do question the effort. In r/SmallYTChannel someone puts it as the ratio of "effort spent vs attention gained" being lopsided. That is a fair complaint about hand-typing captions. It is not a fair complaint about generating and proofreading them, which is a different amount of work.

Burned in or uploaded: do both, deliberately

The professional answer, from r/PartneredYoutube: "We only burn them on screen for emphasis. We do, however, load subtitles as a separate standalone file to YouTube to ensure spellings/names/etc"

That is the whole method in one sentence. Burned-in text is a design element: the punchline, the number, the phrase you want people to read even while scrolling. The uploaded file is the accessibility and search layer, and it carries the spellings.

The case against burning everything, from r/PartneredYoutube: "Burned in subtitles are normally a bad idea. Makes your video painful to watch for users that don't use subtitles."

And the practical argument, from r/NewTubers: "With burned subtitles you have to reupload the entire video. Another big advantage of separate subtitles is the possibility to upload multiple" language tracks.

From the accessibility side, in r/accessibility: "Closed captions are better as they can be removed by a person who finds them distracting but also allow for language translation."

Auto-captions, and the proofreading step

On accuracy, from r/LinusTechTips: "Premiere has an auto transcribing feature, 90% of the time the transcription is accurate."

Ninety percent sounds fine until you count. A ten minute video runs to roughly 1,500 words, so one in ten wrong is around 150 errors, and they cluster on names, products and technical terms. Those are the words your video is about.

Sync is the other failure. From r/premiere: "Premiere Pro's captions often drift out of sync or mis-handle" the material.

So the workflow is: generate automatically, then read the transcript once with a finger on the proper nouns. Two minutes a video, and it is the highest-value manual step in the whole pipeline.

The search reason most people miss

From r/NewTubers: "if your video mentions specific terms or topics, having accurate captions helps you show up in search results for those terms."

This inverts the usual framing. Captions are not only an accessibility obligation, they are the machine-readable text of your video, and they are how a platform knows what you actually said. Auto-captions that mangle your subject matter are actively costing you the visibility the captions were meant to earn.

Per platform

• YouTube long-form: upload a caption file. Burn in only for emphasis moments. Set the video language so captions are offered at all.
• YouTube Shorts: assume no sound and no tap. Burned-in text carries the hook, and it must survive the crop, so keep it away from the edges.
• TikTok: auto-captions are available and editable in the app. Edit them rather than accepting them, and reposition them off the interface furniture.
• Instagram Reels: same discipline. Keep text clear of the bottom bar and the right-hand icons, which cover more than you expect.

The common failure across all three vertical formats is text placed where the interface sits. Check a real phone before publishing, not the desktop preview.

Style that stays readable

• Two lines maximum on screen at once, three or four words per line for vertical.
• A solid or semi-solid backing behind text over busy footage.
• No more than one styling gimmick. Word-by-word colour pops get tiring fast.
• Match caption timing to speech, not to the beat of the music.

We see this constantly, and the caption note we give most often is that the text is on screen slightly too long, which makes a video feel slow even when the picture is cutting fast.

The short version

• A third of viewers may be reading them. Accuracy is not optional.
• Burn in for emphasis, upload a file for accuracy and search.
• Auto-captions run about 90% accurate. Proofread names and terms.
• Captions are how the platform learns what your video is about.
• On vertical, keep text clear of the crop and the interface.

Read next

• AI in Video Editing: What It Actually Does Well, for how far to trust auto-generated captions.
• Short-Form Length: What the Platforms and Creators Say, for caption placement on vertical video.

If captioning is the step that keeps getting skipped, it is included in what we do: the first video is free up to four editing hours.