How to Add Captions to Instagram Stories

Adding captions to your Instagram Stories sets you apart and enhances accessibility for all viewers, whether watching with or without sound. Captions explain your message, grab attention and keep viewers engaged, boosting the impact of your content.

To make your Instagram Stories and Reels more inclusive and engaging, you can add captions and subtitles manually by typing out each word. Alternatively, you can use the captions sticker, which auto-generates captions for you. However, Instagram’s captioning is not available globally, and the text styles are limited.

Luckily, there’s Subcap, an AI generated captions app that lets you add captions wherever you like. With Subcap, you can customize the appearance and placement of your captions to fit your unique style and storytelling needs.

 

Adding captions to your Instagram Stories offers several key benefits:

  1. Increased Accessibility
  2. Improved Engagement
  3. Better SEO
  4. Longer Watch Time
  5. Increased Audience Reach
  6. Enhanced Brand Awareness and Purchase Intent

 

How to add captions to instagram stories

 

Adding captions to Instagram Stories using Subcap

Go to Subcap app and either select Record New Video or Choose from Library.

After adding a video, select your video language.

 

Select language on Subcap app    Select languages on the app

 

And tap Auto-Generate Captions.

If you want to add subtitles automatically, select Go Pro.

If you are already Pro, it’ll ask again and just select Continue. And then you can edit the subtitles easily if necessary.

 

Add captions (subtitles)? Continue or Add Manually buttons

 

Congrats! You now have a captioned video that you can share on Instagram Stories. Now you can connect with your viewers instantly to make more connections, increase engagement rates, and gain followers.

If you have any questions, please check our FAQ page.

How to Fix Instagram’s Auto-Generated Captions

Automatically generated captions are now available for all feed videos on Instagram and captions will be turned on by default. TikTok introduced this feature in April 2021, so it’s not surprising that Instagram did the same.

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said that “It’s a long time coming, but we’re excited to share a new tool that empowers those in the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. Videos on Instagram will now have auto-generated captions, where you have the option to turn them off or on.”

Captioning on Instagram: Instagram's auto-captions, two phones showing settings
Image Credit: Instagram

 

What is wrong with Instagram’s Auto-Captions?

Even though it is a late but great feature, it’s still not good enough.

Let’s learn all about captioning on Instagram. Here are all the features that it’s currently missing.

 

1. Customization:

Your videos on Instagram feed will have black and white text captions along the bottom of the screen and you cannot change the font, size or location. You cannot change the color of the text either. Needless to say, you can do all of those and more on Subcap. You can also add emojis to your captions.

 

2. Editing:

You don’t have the option to edit the auto-captions on Instagram.  They will be auto-generated and that means lots of wrong captions which are doomed to become funny memes. Don’t risk it and edit your captions via Subcap.

 

3. Limited Language Options:

Instagram’s auto-generated captions are only available in 17 languages for now. Subcap supports 125 languages and their variants with great accuracy.

 

4. No Auto-Captioning for Stories or Reels:

Instagram hasn’t made any announcements about the auto-captions feature for Stories and Reels. In the meantime, you can use Subcap and post your videos on every social media platform including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram Reels and Stories, Facebook, Twitter or via E-Mail, Whatsapp, etc.

As you can see above, Instagram’s auto-captioning feature is great for accessibility and more. However, it’s not quite there yet.

Subcap is perfect for captioning on Instagram. If you’d like to try Subcap, click the links below.

iOS

Android

If you’d like to know why it’s a good idea to caption all your videos, read our blog post about it.

Why You Should Always Add Subtitles to Your Videos

 

Why You Should Always Add Subtitles to Your Videos

Did you know…

that 6% of the world’s population is affected by deafness or hearing loss?

that 85% of all social media videos are watched without sound?

that videos with subtitles are 80% more likely to be watched in full?

According to Forbes, 78% of consumers’ purchases are impacted by companies’ social media posts. For that matter, it’s really to your benefit to connect with as many social media users as possible, including people with disabilities.

While the main use of accessibility features is to enable people with disabilities to use social media, using them properly provides more business benefits, such as greater reach, higher engagement and better SEO. Because not only the deaf community but also everyone who uses social media actively can benefit from readable videos.

85% of videos are watched without sound.  For this reason, subtitles can help boost your SEO and even improve brand recall by enabling search engines to crawl and index your videos. Despite all these benefits, only 36% of organizations add subtitles to all their video content. Wouldn’t you want to make a difference and get ahead?

 

 

So,  let’s sum up…

✅ Get 17% more reactions compared to non-subtitled videos 

✅ Get 26% more CTA clicks compared to non-subtitled videos

✅ Get 35% more viewers compared to non-subtitled videos

✅ Engage with 85% of viewers who don’t have their sound on

✅ Make your contents accessible to more than 400 million deaf people

✅ Increase your watch time and boost your ranking by 15%

✅ Connect with your viewers

✅ Instantly build more relationship

✅ Increase engagement rates 

✅ Create scroll-stopping videos 

✅ Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and more. Stories, ads? Them too.

✅ Get more clicks, sales and conversions

✅ Waste less time on creating subtitles and captions manually

✅ Improve SEO, index your videos in multiple languages

 

You want to add subtitles but you think you don’t have enough time for it? Why don’t you try an auto-subtitle app like Subcap?

Subcap allows you to shoot a video simultaneously or upload a video from the gallery. It automatically transcribes the audio to text which you can edit or copy. Subcap’s auto-captions maker uses artificial intelligence to generate subtitles with perfect accuracy. Subtitles can be added in different colors, fonts, or positions according to selection. With Subcap, you can easily and automatically add subtitles to your videos not only in English but also in 125 languages and variants.

Subcap is free to download and includes in-app purchases. If no subscription is purchased, you can manually add subtitles to your videos. During your subscription period, you don’t have to pay for anything extra, so no bad surprises!