Guide · Updated
How to make animated text and kinetic typography
Make word-by-word captions, kinetic typography, animated titles and highlighted text for Reels, TikTok and YouTube, and export it transparent to use over your video.
Animated text is the quickest upgrade for a talking-head video. Words that pop in as they are spoken, a hook that slams onto the screen or a title that types itself out all hold attention in the first seconds. Here is how to make each.
1. Choose the kind of text
- Word-by-word captions: Boxed word captions moves a highlight box from word to word; Caption bar shows a bold subtitle bar.
- Hooks: Hook title with one highlighted word, for the first second of a Short.
- Titles: Title – simple, Title – with rule and Chapter title for openings and sections.
- Quotes: Quote – simple or Pull quote with marker.
- Emphasis: highlighter text and callouts such as Callout with arrow.
- Names: lower thirds like Lower third – simple; see the lower thirds guide.
2. Type your words
Paste the line exactly as it is spoken. For word-by-word captions, set the seconds per word to match your speaking pace (about 0.3 to 0.4 seconds for natural speech) and the number of words per screen (three or four reads best on a phone).
3. Style it
Set the text color, accent, size and shadow. Uppercase with a strong accent color is the common short-form look; sentence case in white with a soft shadow suits calmer videos.
4. Export on a transparent background
Set the background to None and export a transparent MOV for Premiere Pro, Final Cut or DaVinci Resolve, or a WebM for CapCut. Place the text layer above your clip and line it up with the audio.
What makes kinetic typography work
- Move words when they are said, not before.
- Emphasise one word per line, not every word.
- Keep text inside the safe area, away from the app buttons at the bottom and right of the screen.
- Use one or two fonts and colors across the whole video.
More text styles are on the animated text and animated captions topic pages, and all text templates are in captions.
Questions people ask
Can the captions sync to my audio automatically?
No. You set the pace per word, then line the clip up with your audio in your editor.
Can I use my own font?
Templates use the built-in type styles; you control size, color, case and shadow.