We all know that inclusivity and accessibility are important online. Adding captions to your Reels and TikToks is a great way to join in the movement towards making social media a place where everyone is welcome. But transcribing all of your videos and then creating captions with TikTok or Instagram's editing features is extremely time consuming. It's definitely time for TikTok and Instagram to add this as an automatic feature to their apps, and Instagram is slowly testing out a captions sticker for Instagram stories but ... for now, let's all do our part to fill the gaps. Here are five programs that will automatically transcribe your videos and add captions to them.
1. Submagic
Submagic is an AI too used to create dynamic captions for Reels & Tiktok in just one click. You simply upload your video, choose your language, and the captions will be generated automatically for you. They have templates you can choose from and everything is customizable to make the process as easy as possible from the color to the font or even the overall style.
2. Clipomatic
Clipomatic costs $4.99. You have to record your videos within the app to get auto generated captions, so if you normally film inside Instagram for one of its filters - Clipomatic isn't the choice for you. The app has it's own filters though, and you have options for the style of your captions. It has a 4.6 star rating out of 4.2K reviews on the App Store.
3. Threads
Threads is essentially Instagram's version of Facebook messenger. It's great that they have an app with captioning available, but it's frustrating that you have to leave the main Instagram app to access this feature. Much like Clipomatic, you have to record in the app to get autogenerated captions. While the app is made by Instagram, it does not have all the filters available on Instagram's main app.
4. Kapwing
Kapwing is a pretty cool service for many reasons. It's an online video, image, and GIF editor that is completely free - and get this, when you export - there are no watermarks. We tried this one out because *free*, and we were pretty pleased with the results. Simply upload the video, let it auto generate captions, and then you can easily go through and edit where the generator misheard you. You can customize the font and color and move the captions around on the screen.
5. Kaptioned: Automatic Subtitles
You can upload footage from other sources to Kaptioned, so if you have a filter you love on another app, you can still use it. Kaptioned will autogenerate captions, and then you can edit them for errors. This app doesn't have a lot of customization options for how the captions look, but it's free and seems to get the job done.
These are all great options to add subtitles to your videos to make them more accessible. The downfall in all of them is lack of complete customization of the caption element. If you're really set on making your captions look a certain way to match an aesthetic, you'll need to keep manually adding captions. We promise the extra work of adding captions (no matter how you do it) will be worth it because you're making social media a better place for everyone.
