How to Add a Title to YouTube Shorts and TikToks (and Where to Put It)

Put a short title on the first 3 to 4 seconds of the video, with its top edge about 14% down the frame, and keep it to one idea on two short lines. Every app’s own editor has a text tool: in TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, tap the text tool (Aa or Text), type the title, drag it just under the top bar and set how long it stays.

If you make clips from long videos, StoryCut writes the title for you: each AI clip opens with a headline written from what is said in it, placed below the apps’ buttons and never over the speaker’s eyes. It’s on every plan, Free included.

Looking for the title field instead, the one under the video and in search? That is a different job: see how to write YouTube Shorts titles.

Disclosure: StoryCut publishes this guide and makes the tool it describes.

Sound on or off, people decide whether to stay before the first sentence is over. A title on screen does in one glance what the first sentence does in five seconds: it says what the clip is about and why it is worth the next 40 seconds. It also helps the people who do watch muted, and it gives a clip cut from the middle of a long conversation the context it lost when it was cut.

A good on-screen title is different from your captions. Captions follow every word; the title stays still and says the point. That is why it should be short, at the top, and gone once the clip has started to deliver.

Every app draws its own buttons and text over the video once it is posted. Editors don’t show them, so a title that looks fine while editing can end up under the tabs or the caption on a phone. Here is how much of a 1080×1920 frame each app covers, from each platform’s own published guidance.

The shaded parts are what each app lays over the video, the dashed line is the safe area. A title whose top edge sits 14% down the frame clears TikTok’s tabs (12.5%), Reels’ header (14%) and Shorts’ search bar (10%) at once, so one export works on all three. Check your own frames with the free TikTok, Reels and Shorts safe zone checkers.

• One promise, not a topic. "What 90 days of posting really did" beats "Posting consistency". Say what the viewer gets.
• A small first line, then the main line. 2 to 4 words that set the scene (POSTING EVERY DAY), then 3 to 7 words that make people stay. This is how StoryCut writes every AI clip’s headline.
• Words from the clip. The title should be paid off within the clip. A promise the clip doesn’t keep costs you the next video’s view too.
• One or two key words, set apart. A number or the surprising word, in colour or on a box. Of StoryCut’s 13 looks, Editorial, Poster, Highlight, Yellow Word and Mixed do this; the AI picks the 1 to 3 words.
• Not your captions again. If the title repeats the first sentence word for word, it adds nothing.

Stuck on the words? The free hook generator and the 150 TikTok hooks give you starting points.

Long enough to read it once, no longer. StoryCut gives viewers 1.5 seconds to notice the headline plus 0.2 seconds a word to read it, between 3 and 4 seconds: a usual headline of 6 to 8 words stays 3 seconds, a 12-word one 4 seconds.

Why not leave it up for 5 seconds or the whole clip? Because it then sits over the speaker and next to the captions while the clip is already delivering. Short-video guides put a text hook at 3 seconds or more; past that, it gets in the way.

Drawn by StoryCut’s own renderer on the same frame: Classic, Editorial, Statement, Dark Box, Poster, Highlight, Plain, Soft Box, Outline, Minimal, Tag, Yellow Word and Mixed. Looks without a box get a soft dark halo, so white words stay readable on a white wall.