How to Add Text to a Video on Mac

The fastest way to add text to a video on Mac is to open your movie in an iMovie timeline, select Titles above the browser, position the playhead, and double-click a title style. Here's the full process, and the placement rule that decides how long the text stays on screen whether you meant it to or not.

Open the free Add Text to Video tool →

Add text to a video on Mac with iMovie's Titles browser

With your movie open in the timeline, select Titles above the browser. The available styles appear as thumbnails. Many of them are animated rather than static, and you can see the movement before committing. Skim the pointer across a thumbnail and the animation plays.

If you've set a theme for the movie, titles matching that theme are grouped at the top of the browser, which is the fastest way to keep a project visually consistent. There's also a search field, useful once you know a style by name and don't want to scroll for it.

Two ways to place one. Put the playhead where the title should start and double-click the style. It lands at the playhead. Or drag the style from the browser directly onto the clip where you want it. Both work; the second gives you more control over exactly where it lands, which matters more than it sounds.

The placement rule that sets your title's duration

This is the part of iMovie titles that catches everyone, and it isn't documented anywhere you'd look while you're in a hurry.

Where you drop a title inside a clip determines how long it lasts. Drop it in the first or last third of the clip, and its duration is automatically adjusted to cover just that third. Drop it in the centre, and it's adjusted to span the entire clip.

So a title that "won't go away" is almost always a title that was dropped near the middle of a long shot. The fix isn't a setting, it's a placement: put it in the last third, look at the result, and lengthen it deliberately if a third turns out to be too brief. Working that way round means the default is short and you extend it, rather than the default being permanent and you fighting it.

Text as a layer, not as a preset with a duration rule

Montaj handles text as a layer on a timeline rather than a preset dropped onto a clip, and its text can be animated. Placed where you want it in the frame, appearing and disappearing when you decide rather than when a duration rule decides for you.

That distinction matters most in vertical video, where the usable area is narrow and a title sitting in the wrong band gets covered by the app's own interface. Everything runs on your device, with nothing uploaded and no watermark. If you're working in widescreen and iMovie's styles suit the piece, add text to a video on Mac there. The Titles browser is a genuinely good library.