How to add text to a screen recording

To add text to a screen recording, place a title on the frame, choose when it appears and disappears, and give it an entrance so the eye notices it. Good on-screen text does one job at a time: name the step, point at the result, or tell the viewer what to do next.

Three kinds of text, three jobs

• Titles open a section: "Step 2: invite your team". Big, short, on screen for two to four seconds.
• Callouts point at something: "This button exports the report". Small, near the thing, gone once it has been seen.
• Captions carry your voice for people watching muted, which on social is most of them.

Entrances that guide the eye

Text that simply appears is easy to miss. A short entrance tells the viewer where to look: fly in for lower thirds, pop for a headline, typewriter for a line you want read word by word, rise or fade for anything quieter. Keep entrances under half a second so they never slow the demo down.

How to do it in Girato

1. Record, or import a video you already have.
2. Press Text on the bar under the preview. A title lands at the playhead, three seconds long, ready to type.
3. Pick a font, an effect (shadow, outline, glow, pill or bar) and an entrance in the Overlays tab.
4. Drag the title on the preview to place it, and drag its bar on the timeline to set exactly when it shows.
5. For captions, record with your mic on and choose Auto-captions. They are transcribed by a speech model that runs on your computer, and they stay free.

Rules that keep text readable

• Six words or fewer for a title. If it needs a sentence, it is a caption.
• Keep text clear of the area you are zooming into, or it covers the action.
• Give a title a dark pill or a shadow over light apps, and a light one over dark apps.
• One piece of text on screen at a time, unless one is a caption.