iMovie Subtitles: How to Add Auto Captions on Mac

You add subtitles in iMovie by typing each line as a title, because iMovie has no auto captions and cannot import an SRT file. For automatic subtitles on a Mac, finish the edit, export the movie, and transcribe that file with another tool, then burn the subtitles into a new copy or upload the subtitle file beside the video.

Below: what iMovie can and cannot do with text, four ways to get subtitles onto an iMovie video — built-in titles, Final Cut Pro, a free command-line route and a subtitle app — and how to choose between burning them in and uploading a file.

Does iMovie have auto captions?

No. iMovie for Mac has no speech recognition and no subtitle import. Apple's iMovie user guide covers titles, maps, backgrounds, music and voiceovers, and has no topic on captions, subtitles or subtitle files. The one text tool is the title: a styled block of text you place above a clip and type by hand.

Titles were designed for opening credits and lower thirds, not dialogue, and it shows the moment you try to subtitle a whole video with them:

• Every line is typed by hand. Nothing in iMovie listens to the audio.
• Every line is timed by hand. Apple's guide says you set the duration of each title individually, by dragging its edges or typing a value.
• Many styles move. Many titles are animated, and some theme and animated styles do not let you change the font.
• Nothing comes out as a file. The text exists only inside the project, so YouTube gets no subtitle track it can index, translate or let viewers switch off.

At a typical speaking pace, a ten-minute talking-head video is somewhere around 1,500 words. That is roughly 150 to 200 subtitles, each one a title to type and time.

Apple's own automatic captions live one step up, in Final Cut Pro. Its caption generator works from spoken U.S. English and needs a Mac with Apple silicon, according to Apple's Final Cut Pro guide.

Four ways to add subtitles to an iMovie video

1. iMovie titles — free and built in; fine for a short clip with a few lines.
2. Final Cut Pro — Apple's automatic captions, for U.S. English on an Apple silicon Mac.
3. Whisper and FFmpeg — free and open source, run from Terminal.
4. A subtitle app such as Sablate — transcribes, edits, styles and burns in, in any of 100 spoken languages.

The first two keep the subtitles inside Apple's apps. The last two work on the movie you export from iMovie, which is why all of them belong at the end of the edit, not the beginning.

Method 1: Type subtitles as iMovie titles

For a 30-second clip with a handful of lines, titles are the quickest route and cost nothing. Following Apple's steps for adding titles:

1. Open the project in the timeline and click Titles above the browser.
2. Pick a plain, static style. Lower-third styles sit where viewers expect subtitles; skip anything animated.
3. Drag the title into the timeline above the clip, at the point where the first line is spoken.
4. Double-click the sample text in the viewer, type the line, and set the font, size and colour with the controls above the viewer. Click Apply.
5. Drag the title's edges in the timeline so it covers exactly the words it shows, or select it, click the Clip Information button and type a value in the Duration field.
6. Repeat for every line.

Keep each title to one or two short lines. Netflix's English style guide caps a line at 42 characters, and a line that disappears before it can be read is worse than no subtitle at all. The reading-speed guide has the numbers.

The limits are the ones listed above: no transcription, no file, and work that grows with every minute of speech. Past a minute or two of dialogue, the next three methods save more time than they cost.

Method 2: Send the project to Final Cut Pro

If you already own Final Cut Pro, or were going to move to it anyway, this is the best-integrated route. iMovie hands a project over directly:

1. In iMovie, open the project and choose File > Send Movie To Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro opens with a new library holding the project and its media.
2. In Final Cut Pro, generate captions from the timeline audio. Apple's guide says the first run downloads a language model, once.
3. Correct the captions, then export them as a file or burn them in when you share. Apple's caption export guide lists burn-in among the share options.

What it costs and covers, from Apple's own pages: Final Cut Pro is $299.99 as a one-time purchase, or part of Apple Creator Studio at $12.99 a month, which new subscribers can try free for 30 days. Automatic captions work from U.S. English speech only and need an Apple silicon Mac. Only movie projects transfer; an iMovie trailer has to be converted to a movie first.

For an English-language video on a recent Mac, nothing else on this list fits as well: the captions sit on the same timeline as the edit, so a later trim moves them with it. For any other spoken language, Final Cut Pro offers manual captions only.

Method 3: Whisper and FFmpeg, free in Terminal

OpenAI's Whisper is a free, open-source speech recognizer that writes an .srt file directly, and FFmpeg can draw that file into the picture. Both run in Terminal, and Whisper needs Python and FFmpeg installed first. That setup is the real cost of this route.

First export the finished movie: select the project in iMovie, choose File > Share > File, and save it. Here it is called my-movie.mp4. Then transcribe it:

whisper my-movie.mp4 --model turbo --output_format srt

turbo is the default model and a good one for subtitles. Whisper detects the spoken language by itself; add --language with a language code if it guesses wrong. The command writes my-movie.srt into the current folder. Open it in a text editor and fix names before going further. If a line repeats itself or text appears over silence, that is a known Whisper failure with known fixes, covered in why Whisper repeats lines and invents text.

To burn the subtitles in, FFmpeg has to include libass, the subtitle renderer. Homebrew's standard ffmpeg package does not, so the usual burn-in command stops with a "No such filter" error. Homebrew's ffmpeg-full package does include it, and installs alongside the standard one without replacing it:

brew install ffmpeg-full
"$(brew --prefix ffmpeg-full)/bin/ffmpeg" -i my-movie.mp4 -vf "subtitles=my-movie.srt" -c:a copy my-movie-subtitled.mp4

The result is a new movie with the subtitles drawn into every frame, in FFmpeg's default white style. Changing the look means writing force_style parameters by hand; burning subtitles into a video covers the styling options and the quality settings.

Method 4: A subtitle app on your Mac

A desktop subtitle app handles transcription, correction, styling and the burn-in in one window, with no Terminal. In Sablate, starting from the movie you exported from iMovie:

1. Drop the .mp4 or .mov into Sablate and choose a model: Balanced on the free plan, Accurate (large-v3-turbo) on Pro.
2. Read the transcript in the editor. Fix names, drag cue edges on the timeline where the timing is off, and watch for the warning on lines that go by too fast to read.
3. Pick a preset in the Style panel — Classic for a film, Reels or Hormozi for vertical social video — then adjust the font, size and position.
4. Open Export and choose Video with burned-in subtitles (.mp4) for a copy with the subtitles in the picture, or Subtitle file (.srt) for YouTube and Vimeo.
5. For a second language, choose Add language…. The translation is a layer on the same timings, with its own style and font, and exports the same way.

Once the speech model and any Argos language packs are downloaded, transcription, offline translation and burn-in run without an internet connection, so the movie never leaves your Mac. Sablate needs macOS 12 Monterey or later and comes in separate builds for Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Compared with Final Cut Pro, it transcribes 100 spoken languages instead of one and adds translations. What it does not do is put anything back on your iMovie timeline: change the edit and you export and transcribe again.

The free plan needs no account and covers videos up to ten minutes, three jobs a month, the Fast and Balanced models and one offline translation layer; its burn-in carries a small corner mark. Pro is $29 once, with no length limit, every model and an unmarked burn-in. The pricing page lists the rest.

Can you import an SRT file into iMovie?

No. iMovie imports video, photos and audio, and a subtitle file has nowhere to go. If you already have an .srt — from Whisper, a transcription service or a colleague — there are two ways to use it with an iMovie movie:

• Burn it into an exported copy, with FFmpeg (method 3) or a subtitle app (method 4). This is the only option for TikTok, Instagram Reels and X, which do not accept subtitle files.
• Upload it beside the video. YouTube and Vimeo take the movie and the .srt as separate uploads, so viewers can switch the subtitles off, search engines can read them, and a typo takes a text edit to fix instead of a new export.

Which platforms want which is laid out in hardsub vs softsub. Sablate's editor also imports .srt and .vtt files, so a file made elsewhere can be styled and burned in without transcribing again.

Which method should you use?

"It's a 20-second clip with three lines." iMovie titles. Typing three lines takes less time than installing anything.

"I edit in English on an Apple silicon Mac and might move to Final Cut Pro anyway." Final Cut Pro. The captions stay on the timeline and follow later edits.

"I'm comfortable in Terminal and need one language, for free." Whisper and FFmpeg.

"The video isn't in English, or it needs a second language." Sablate: 100 spoken languages, translation layers, and a separate burned-in copy or .srt per language.

"It's going to TikTok or Reels." Any method that burns in, styled for a muted vertical feed. Where to put subtitles on Reels, TikTok and Shorts covers the safe zones.

How to keep subtitles in sync after you change the edit

Subtitles made outside iMovie are timed to one specific export. Trim a clip, add a transition or swap a shot afterwards, and every subtitle after that point is early or late by exactly the length you changed.

• Lock the edit first. Make subtitles once the cut is final, not while it is still moving.
• Re-export and re-transcribe after a real change. For a small shift, fixing the timings in the editor is quicker; for a re-cut, start over.
• Keep the .srt and a clean export together. A burned-in copy cannot be un-burned. With the clean movie and the subtitle file, you can render a new copy in another style or language at any time.
• Burn in last, once per destination. One copy for Reels, one for a client, and the clean movie plus its .srt for YouTube.

iMovie handles the edit; the subtitles have to come from somewhere else. For a few lines, type them as titles. For English on a recent Mac, Final Cut Pro keeps them on the timeline. For anything longer, in another language or in several, download Sablate for Mac, drop in the exported movie, and burn the subtitles in or export the .srt. The free plan covers videos up to ten minutes.

Frequently asked questions

Does iMovie have auto captions?

No. iMovie for Mac cannot turn speech into subtitles, and Apple's iMovie user guide has no topic on captions or subtitles at all. The only text tool is the title, typed and timed by hand. For automatic subtitles, export the movie and transcribe it with another tool, such as Final Cut Pro, Whisper or a subtitle app.

Can you import an SRT file into iMovie?

No. iMovie imports video, photos and audio, but not subtitle files. To use an SRT with an iMovie movie, either burn it into an exported copy with FFmpeg or a subtitle app, or upload it next to the video on YouTube or Vimeo, which accept subtitle files and let viewers switch them off.

How do I add subtitles in iMovie manually?

Use titles. Click Titles above the browser, drag a plain, static style above the clip where a line is spoken, type the line in the viewer and click Apply. Then drag the title's edges so it covers exactly that line. Repeat for every line, which works for a short clip and gets slow for anything longer.

Can Final Cut Pro auto caption an iMovie project?

Yes, if the speech is in U.S. English. Choose File, then Send Movie To Final Cut Pro in iMovie, and generate captions in Final Cut Pro, which needs a Mac with Apple silicon for this. Final Cut Pro costs $299.99 once, or comes with Apple Creator Studio at $12.99 a month.

Is there a free way to auto-generate subtitles for iMovie?

Yes. Whisper, a free open-source speech recognizer, writes an SRT file from the movie you export from iMovie, and FFmpeg burns that file into a new copy; both run in Terminal. Sablate's free plan does the same in an app for videos up to ten minutes, with a small corner mark on the burn-in.

Should I burn subtitles into my iMovie video or upload an SRT?

Burn them in only where the platform will not take a subtitle file. TikTok, Instagram Reels and X need burned-in subtitles. YouTube and Vimeo accept an SRT uploaded with the video, which viewers can switch off and you can correct later without exporting the movie again.