Captions for Facebook Reels and feed video.
One captioned file that works in Reels, in the feed and wherever it gets shared on to. Placed clear of Facebook’s UI in all three.
Burned-in captions are the safest option for Facebook because the same file has to work in three places — the 9:16 Reels player, the 4:5 feed, and a shared or embedded copy — and burned-in text travels with the video into all of them.
Facebook is the platform where one video ends up in the most different shapes. The same file plays full-bleed in the Reels player, cropped in the feed, in a shared post inside a group, and embedded on somebody’s site — each with different furniture on top of it and a different amount of the frame visible.
That is the argument for burning captions in rather than relying on the platform: the words are part of the picture, so they survive every one of those trips. It is also the argument for placing them carefully, because a caption that sits perfectly in the Reels player can be cropped clean off in the feed.
Survives the reshare
Burned-in captions travel with the file into groups, embeds, downloads and cross-posts. Platform captions do not always follow.
Placed for the crop, not just the player
Drag the captions to a band that stays visible in both the 9:16 Reels view and the 4:5 feed crop. The preview shows what viewers see.
Reads on a small, older-device screen
Contrast is measured against your own footage on every frame, so captions stay legible on the dimmer, smaller screens a lot of Facebook viewing happens on.
Hindi and Hinglish included
A large share of Facebook video in India is Hindi or Hindi-English mixed. Both are first-class here, not an afterthought behind an English model.
The safe band
Every short-video surface reserves some of the frame for its own controls, and Facebook uses more of it than most because the Reels player carries the caption text, the audio attribution, the follow button and the action rail all at once.
The band that survives everywhere is the middle third of the frame — high enough to clear the post text and audio tag at the bottom, low enough to clear the top overlay, and inset from the right edge to clear the action buttons. Captions here are draggable to anywhere on the video and the preview renders them against your actual frames, so this is a decision you make once by eye rather than by guessing at pixel margins.
- Bottom of the frame
- Taken by post text, the audio tag and the profile row. Anything you put here is at risk in the Reels player.
- Right edge
- The action rail — like, comment, share, more. Keep captions inset from it or the last word of long lines disappears behind a button.
- Feed crop
- A 9:16 video shown at 4:5 in the feed loses roughly the top and bottom of the frame. Captions near either edge can be cropped out entirely.
- The middle third
- Visible in the Reels player, inside the feed crop, and unobstructed in an embed. The one band that works in all three.
Cross-posting from Instagram
Most Facebook Reels are the same file that went to Instagram, which means the captioning decision has already been made by the time it gets here. That is usually fine — the two players have similar furniture — with one exception worth knowing about.
If you let Instagram generate captions rather than burning them in, the cross-posted copy on Facebook may not carry them. Burned-in captions have no such failure mode, which is the practical reason most creators who post to both burn them in once and post the same file twice.
How it works
Drop in the Reel
Portrait or landscape, up to 2 minutes free. Your video file is never uploaded.
Style and place
Pick from 240+ styles, then drag the captions into the middle band so they survive both the Reels player and the feed crop.
Export once, post twice
One burned-in file for Facebook and Instagram both. Exports are free and unlimited, so a re-cut costs nothing.
Common questions
Does Facebook add captions automatically?
Facebook can generate captions for uploaded video, but they render in Facebook’s own treatment and position and depend on what the automatic transcription heard. Burning captions in gives you the styling and the placement, and — the deciding point for most creators — the words stay with the file when it is shared, embedded or downloaded.
Where should captions sit so they survive the feed crop?
In the middle third of the frame. A 9:16 video shown at 4:5 in the feed loses roughly the top and bottom, and the Reels player covers the bottom with post text and the audio tag and the right edge with the action rail. The middle band is the only region visible in the Reels player, inside the feed crop, and in an embed.
Can I use the same captioned file on Instagram and Facebook?
Yes, and it is the usual workflow. Burn the captions in once and post the same file to both. The one thing that does not travel reliably is platform-generated captions on a cross-post, which is a large part of why burned-in is the default for creators posting to both.
Do Hindi captions work?
Yes — real Devanagari, not a transliteration, with word-level timing. Hinglish is also supported as its own mode: Hindi-English mixed speech written in Roman letters, which is what most Indian audiences actually read comfortably.
