How to add captions to a gaming clip or commentary on iPhone

Why caption gaming clips

Gaming highlights, reactions and commentary clips are often watched in feeds with the sound off, often over loud game audio. Captions let viewers follow your reactions and play-by-play without sound, and they help viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing.

This guide is for gameplay clips with your voice on them, whether you screen-recorded a mobile game or saved a captured clip to your library. If you are recording a phone game, the screen recording guide explains how to get your microphone into the recording. For sit-down talk segments with friends, see the podcast clip guide. CaptionAddr burns the captions into the picture, so they show wherever you post.

Caption a gaming clip on iPhone

1. Record your commentary clearly. Turn the microphone on for screen recordings, speak close to it and keep the game volume lower than your voice. Captions come from your speech, not from the game.
2. Choose the video. Tap Select Video in CaptionAddr and pick the clip with Apple’s Photos picker. Vertical, square and landscape videos all work, and the video keeps its shape.
3. Let the captions generate. Captions start as soon as the video opens; keep the app open; the English speech is transcribed on your iPhone, not on a server.
4. Fix game terms and missed words. In Edit Captions, correct character, item and map names, slang and gamer tags, and fix any word that explosions or music turned into the wrong one. You can edit, delete and reorder words, with undo and redo.
5. Style and place the captions. Choose one of the 20 fonts and a size that reads on a phone, turn on the tinted background over bright or busy scenes, and drag the captions away from the action, the minimap, health bars and other on-screen HUD.
6. Export and post. Tap Export Video to save the captioned copy to Photos, then upload it to TikTok, Reels, Shorts or any other app. The watermark is off unless you turn it on.

Tips for gaming captions

• Keep the game quieter than your voice. Loud game audio, music and sound effects can drown out speech and cause missed or wrong words, and the app doesn’t remove them.
• Clip the highlight first. Trim the best moment in Photos before captioning; a short clip is quicker to check and stays within the free 2-minute limit.
• Check fast reactions. Shouted or overlapping callouts are the words most likely to come out wrong, so play those moments twice in Edit Captions.
• Delete filler. Remove stray words and repeats in Edit Captions so the captions keep up with the action.
• Keep your original. CaptionAddr exports a new copy and leaves the original clip in your library.

Limits

• Speech only. CaptionAddr captions spoken English. It doesn’t caption game sound effects or music, and it doesn’t read text shown on screen.
• No noise or music removal. The app doesn’t separate your voice from game audio or change the audio, so loud clips may need more corrections.
• English only. CaptionAddr transcribes English speech and doesn’t translate.
• Single-word captions. Words appear one at a time, timed automatically, always in uppercase; there are no speaker labels, full-sentence layouts or manual per-word timing, and you can only fix, delete or reorder the transcribed words.
• Length. Free covers videos up to 2 minutes; CaptionAddr Pro covers up to 30 minutes. The App Store shows the current Pro price in your currency.
• Burned-in captions only. There is no SRT, VTT or text export, and the app doesn’t post to social platforms.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• How to add captions to a screen recording on iPhone
• How to add captions to a podcast clip on iPhone
• Captions for YouTube Shorts
• How to add captions to a reaction or commentary video on iPhone
• How to add captions to a board game rules explainer or playthrough on iPhone

All caption guides →