---
title: "Auto Captions for Reels, Shorts and TikTok | ToolSugar"
description: "Add big, short-line captions to Reels, Shorts and TikTok videos for free. Lines stay under 28 characters and sit above the app buttons. No watermark added."
canonical: https://toolsugar.com/tools/auto-captions-for-reels
image: https://toolsugar.com/og.png
---

# Auto Captions for Reels and Shorts

ToolSugar makes captions for Reels, Shorts and other vertical video. It keeps each caption under 28 characters and burns large text about one fifth of the way up the frame, above where app buttons usually sit. You get an MP4 with no watermark, plus SRT and VTT files, and it needs no account.

Runs on your device

## How it works

1. Drop your finished vertical clip. Editing comes first, because burned captions cannot be moved later.
2. Generate the subtitles on your device and read the preview, watching for names or slang the model may have misheard.
3. Keep Large for Reels selected, press Burn captions, and post the new MP4.

## Key facts

- **Line length**: At most 28 characters per caption, so each one reads in a glance
- **Text size**: 8.5% of the short side of the frame, white with a black outline
- **Position**: Raised 20% from the bottom edge, measured on the frame as it displays
- **Watermark**: None. The only thing added to the picture is your captions

## Common uses

- Captioning a talking-head Reel for people who scroll with the sound off.
- Reusing a phone recording as a Short, with the portrait rotation handled for you.
- Keeping an SRT of the same words to upload to a platform's own caption editor.

## Questions

### Can I edit the words before burning them?

Not on this page yet. If the text needs fixing, download the SRT, correct it, and upload it to your platform as a caption file. That keeps the captions switchable and avoids re-encoding your video.

### Do these captions get animated word by word?

No. Each short line appears and disappears as a block, timed to the speech. We kept to plain, high contrast text rather than offer an animation we cannot yet time accurately for every word.

### Will the video lose quality?

Burning has to re-encode the picture, so it is not lossless. We export H.264 at CRF 21 with AAC audio at 192 kbps, a setting that stays visually close to the source for social posting.

[Read the Captions for Reels and Shorts guide](https://toolsugar.com/blog/how-to-add-subtitles-to-a-video)

## Related tools

- [Auto Subtitles](https://toolsugar.com/tools/subtitle-generator)
- [AI Shorts Maker](https://toolsugar.com/tools/ai-shorts-maker)
- [Trim Video](https://toolsugar.com/tools/video-trimmer)
- [Hinglish Subtitle Generator](https://toolsugar.com/tools/hinglish-subtitle-generator)