How to Add Captions and Subtitles in Descript

Because Descript already has an accurate transcript of your video, adding captions is mostly a styling job. You can place auto-synced captions on screen, customize the look, and export either a hardcoded version or a separate SRT subtitle file. This guide covers both.

What you need

• A Descript project with a transcribed video
• A rough idea of where captions should sit (lower third is common)
• Optional: brand fonts and colors for styling

Step 1: Add captions to the scene

Open the project and click the Captions button in the toolbar, or add a Captions layer from the layout panel. Descript reads your transcript and places synced, word-timed captions over the video automatically.

Step 2: Choose a caption style

Pick between full-sentence captions and word-by-word (karaoke style) captions, which highlight each word as it is spoken. Word-by-word works well for social clips. Set the font, size, color, and a background pill or outline so text stays readable over any footage.

Step 3: Fix any misheard words

Since captions come from the transcript, any transcription error shows up on screen. Edit the transcript text directly to correct names, jargon, or homophones, and the captions update to match. Do this before exporting.

Step 4: Export burned-in or as an SRT

For social platforms, export with captions burned into the video so they always show. For YouTube or accessibility, export a separate subtitle file so viewers can toggle them. Both options live in the Publish then Export dialog.

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,400
Welcome back to the channel

2
00:00:02,400 --> 00:00:05,100
Today we are testing a new workflow

Result: a clip with clean, on-brand word-by-word captions for Instagram, plus a tidy SRT file uploaded to the YouTube version of the same video for searchable, toggleable subtitles.