Captioning on Social Media
If you are creating and posting audiovisual content on a social media platform(s), adding captioning will make your content more accessible to your audience. Please visit Transcripts and Captions to learn more general information about captioning. You can also review the following pages for resources and information about creating captioning for your video content: DIY Captioning and Automated Captioning Tools.
Many social media platforms allow users to add automated captions to their videos and some platforms even allow users to upload a human-edited captioning file. Below, we will review the captioning capabilities available within some of the most widely-used social media platforms. Certain capabilities may vary between browser and app-based versions of a social media platform.Ìý
Please note: The terms closed captions and open captions are used throughout this page. Closed captions can be turned on and off by the viewer; open captions are always visible and cannot be turned off.
Facebook allows creators to add closed captions to timelines and profile posts. Before posting, Facebook can generate automated captions, which can be edited in the platform. Creators can also add captioning to a video by uploading a .srt caption file before or after a video has been uploaded.
For captioning a Facebook story post, open captions must be added to the original video before uploading the video to Facebook.
Below are links to captioning information directly from Facebook:
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Creators can , but the creator has to manually specify on each video that they want automated captions to appear. This setting can be updated after the video is posted. Automated captions cannot be edited in the platform.
Instagram does not allow users to upload their own captioning files to video posts, reels, or stories. Human-edited captions must be added as open captions to the original video before the video is uploaded to Instagram.
Viewers have the option to update their account settings to always display (or not display) automated captions when a creator has made them available.
LinkedIn allows creators to add closed captions to videos posted either by personal accounts or LinkedIn Pages. Creators can before or after a video has been posted. Alternatively, after posting a video, that can be edited within the platform. Please note that LinkedIn automated captions are currently available in English only.
TikTok
Before posting, , which can be edited within the platform. Creators can also add captioning by uploading a .srt caption file before posting a video. Once a video has been posted to TikTok, captioning cannot be added or changed.
Twitter (X)
Creators can . A closed captioning (cc) button will be visible for all videos that have captioning available and viewers can use the button to turn captions on and off. The closed captioning button will only appear when the video is embedded on the page, so you must have captions turned on or off to your preference before making a video full screen.