How to Add Subtitles to a Video on Mac
The fastest way to add subtitles to a video on Mac is to transcribe the audio first and generate captions from that transcript, rather than typing them line by line. Here is what the Mac will and won't do for you, and where the built-in transcription stops short.
Open the free Subtitle Generator →
Notes and Live Captions: close, and still not subtitles
The Mac is genuinely good at turning speech into text. It just doesn't do it where you need it.
Notes records and transcribes audio directly inside a note. You click Record Audio in the toolbar, and afterwards double-clicking the recording opens an audio details section containing the transcript, which you can search and copy. Apple lists the requirements plainly: a Mac with M1 or later, and the device language set to one of English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese.
Live Captions goes further in one direction and less far in another. It gives a real-time transcription of spoken audio in any app, and Apple states the audio is processed on device. You switch it on in System Settings > Accessibility > Live Captions, and a control in the top right of the window swaps between your Mac's audio output and its microphone input. It's available on Macs with Apple silicon, and Apple notes that accuracy varies and it shouldn't be relied on in high-risk situations.
Here's the gap. Notes transcribes audio it recorded itself, not a video file sitting in a folder. Live Captions puts text on your screen while something plays. It's a reading aid for the moment, and nothing it displays ends up in your exported clip. Both produce a transcript beside the video. Neither produces subtitles inside it.
Add subtitles to a video on Mac from a transcript, not a keyboard
Typing subtitles is the approach everyone tries once. It fails for a reason that has nothing to do with typing speed: it's not the words that take the time, it's the timing. Every line needs an in point and an out point, and the moment you edit the video, every one of them is wrong again.
Starting from a transcript inverts that. The timings come from the audio, so they're right by construction, and your job shrinks to fixing the handful of words the model misheard.
Transcription that runs on your device
Montaj transcribes the audio track on your device using WhisperKit , the audio never leaves the machine to be read , and turns the result into word-by-word karaoke captions, each word timed to the moment it's actually spoken.
Corrections happen in the text. Fix a proper noun or a piece of jargon by editing the word, and the word-level timing follows it, so there's no re-syncing afterwards. On export the captions are part of the image, which means they display wherever the file travels rather than depending on a player. It's free today, with no watermark. If you need to add subtitles to a video on Mac and you've been dreading the typing, that part isn't required.
How to add subtitles to a video on Mac in 4 steps
- 1
Get the words out of the audio before anything else
Subtitles always start as a transcript. Montaj transcribes the audio track on your device, so nothing is sent anywhere to be read.
- 2
Turn the transcript into word-by-word captions
Each word carries its own timing, so the caption lands on the word as it's spoken rather than as a block that roughly matches.
- 3
Correct the wording in the text itself
Fix a name, a brand or a piece of jargon by editing the text. The word-level timing follows the correction, so nothing has to be re-synced by hand.
- 4
Export with the subtitles burned into the picture
Because they're part of the image rather than a separate track, they show up wherever the file goes, including players with captions switched off.
The verdict
— Chloé, Senior Video Editor