YouTube Shorts captions

Captions for YouTube Shorts

9:16Burn-in MP4SRT export

YouTube treats Shorts differently from longform when it comes to closed captions. On a regular video, uploading an SRT file works fine and the CC button reveals the captions when a viewer taps it. On Shorts, that flow is more fragile. The mobile UI hides the CC button behind a tap that few viewers bother with, and the platform's auto-captions sometimes overlay your custom ones at an unreadable size. Burning captions into the Short itself sidesteps both problems.

Drop your video or audio file here

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Supports video and audio files up to 2048MB

About Captions for YouTube Shorts

The default styling on this page targets the YouTube Shorts surface: bottom-center positioning above the channel and engagement column, a bold sans-serif font, and a contrast background that stays readable when the channel-name banner appears below the video. The preview overlay matches what the burn-in will produce, frame for frame.

This is not the only valid path. If you want the CC button to show up on a Short, you can export an SRT from this page instead and upload it alongside the video in YouTube Studio. The same transcription run produces both outputs, so you can decide per-Short whether burn-in or sidecar makes sense.

When this fits

Repurposed longform clips

When you clip a 60-second highlight out of a longform podcast or interview, burned captions land more reliably than YouTube's opt-in CC track on the Shorts feed.

Mobile-first viewing

Most Shorts get watched on phones where the CC button is one tap deep in a menu most viewers skip. Burned captions are always visible.

Channels chasing watch-time

The first three seconds of a Short decide whether the algorithm pushes it further. Visible captions in the first frame help retention measurably.

Educational content

Tutorials and explainers benefit from captions for comprehension. Burning them in works whether the viewer is in a quiet room or on a noisy commute.

How to add captions to a YouTube Short

1 Drop the Short

Upload your 9:16 video. The file stays on your device throughout the process.

2 Generate the transcript

Whisper runs locally and produces a transcript. Fix any wrong words inline.

3 Choose burn-in or SRT

For the Shorts feed, burn the captions in. For longform context where the CC button is useful, export an SRT and upload it to YouTube Studio.

4 Upload to YouTube

Take the captioned MP4 to YouTube Studio and post it as a Short. Captions are visible from the first frame.

Frequently asked questions

Why do YouTube's own auto-captions not work for Shorts?

They do work, in the sense that YouTube generates a caption track for every Short. The problem is that the CC button is buried in the mobile UI, the auto-captions are mediocre quality, and they can collide visually with any captions you burned into the video. Burning in your own captions and skipping the YouTube layer is the cleaner path for Shorts specifically.

Can I upload an SRT to a Short the way I can for longform?

YouTube Studio does let you upload a caption file for a Short, but the CC button on the Shorts feed is hidden enough that very few viewers ever see those captions. The SRT export from this page is more useful for longform YouTube uploads where the CC button is a normal part of the player UI.

Will burned-in captions get flagged for duplicate content?

No. YouTube does not flag burned captions as duplicate content. The platform generates its own caption track on top, but the visible captions you burned in are part of the video frame and are not compared against your script for any kind of policy decision.

Can I caption a Short clipped from a longer YouTube video?

Yes. Trim or download the section you want to use as a Short, drop it on this page, generate captions, and export. The same logic applies regardless of whether the source was originally a Short or a 30-minute episode.

Do animated captions get more watch-time on Shorts?

Anecdotally yes; there is no public ranking signal that rewards animated captions over static ones, but creators who use the MrBeast-style word-by-word animation consistently report better retention. The karaoke highlight mode in the customize panel produces a simpler version of that effect.

Your video never leaves your device

All processing happens locally in your browser, and your files never leave your device. The page reads your video through a standard browser file input, holds the bytes in memory, runs Whisper for speech recognition in a Web Worker, and writes the captioned MP4 back to your disk. No upload, no cloud transcription queue, no external copy.