How to add captions to a read-aloud or kids’ story video on iPhone

Why caption read-aloud videos

Read-aloud videos, such as a bedtime story, a picture book shared with a class or a story time clip, are often played on a phone or a classroom screen with the sound low or off. Captions let viewers follow the story as each word appears, show young listeners the words they hear, and help viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing.

This guide is for videos where you read a story aloud to the camera. For reviews and recommendations made for adult readers, see the book review guide; for announcements and explainers made for your own class, the classroom guide. CaptionAddr burns the captions into the picture, so they show wherever you share the video.

Caption a read-aloud video on iPhone

1. Record with your voice up close. Set the iPhone near you, read at a steady pace and keep page turns and background noise low. Captions come from your speech, not from the text printed on the page.
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 names and story words. Character names, made-up words, sound words you read aloud and lines in silly voices are the words most likely to come out wrong. Correct them in Edit Captions. You can edit, delete and reorder words, with undo and redo.
5. Keep the pictures clear. Choose a plain font from the 20 available at a large size, turn on the tinted background over bright pages, and drag the captions to the top or bottom edge so they don’t cover the illustrations.
6. Export and share. Tap Export Video to save the captioned copy to Photos, then share it to a class page, a message, TikTok, Reels or Shorts. The watermark is off unless you turn it on.

Tips for read-aloud captions

• Read a little slower. Captions follow your voice word by word, so a gentle pace gives young viewers more time with each word.
• Check the character voices. Very high, low or whispered voices are harder to transcribe, so play those lines back and fix them.
• Keep the room quiet. A television, music or toys in the background can cover words, and CaptionAddr doesn’t remove background noise.
• Remember the uppercase style. Captions always appear in uppercase, so they may look different from the lowercase print in the book.
• 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 music or sound effects, and it doesn’t read the text printed on the pages.
• English only. CaptionAddr transcribes English speech and doesn’t translate, so it can’t add subtitles in a second language for a bilingual story time.
• 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.
• No audio changes. The app doesn’t remove background noise or change the audio; deleting a word removes it from the captions only.
• 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 book review or BookTok video on iPhone
• How to add captions to a classroom or teacher video on iPhone
• Accessible captions for videos on iPhone
• How to add captions to a parenting tips video on iPhone

All caption guides →