Show captions one word at a time
Ask the Tella Agent for single-word captions or a highlighted active word. Set the font, colors, size and position.
Try it in Tella
Paste a prompt into the Tella Agent in the editor, or into Claude or ChatGPT connected to Tella, then ask for changes.
Turn on subtitles and switch them to single-word captions so only the word I'm saying shows. Use a bold uppercase font, white text with a black outline, large size. Then show me a card with the caption size so I can fine-tune it.
Show captions one word at a time for this 40-second TikTok workout tip. Use uppercase, bright yellow #FFD60A with a dark shadow. Place them a bit above the middle so they clear the app buttons.
Keep two-line subtitle blocks for my founder clip. Highlight the spoken word in brand teal #14B8A6 and keep the rest of the line white. Put them near the bottom at medium size.
How do I make my captions show one word at a time or highlight the active word?
In Tella, ask the Tella Agent to turn on single-word captions so only the spoken word shows. To do it yourself, click Subs, turn on Subtitles, open your style's settings and turn on Single-word captions under Active word. To keep full lines and highlight the current word, choose Text, Background or Fade the rest.
How to do it
- Open your video in the Tella editor and open the Tella Agent.
- Ask for single-word captions with your font, colors, size and position.
- Adjust the size live with any caption controls the agent shows.
- Click Save as preset in Edit style to reuse the look.
Good to know
- Needs a paid plan or the 7-day trial. Messages use your workspace's credits.
- Lines is unavailable while Single-word captions is on. Turn it off to get blocks of one to three lines.
- Single-word captions stay in one place and don't move between words.
- Subtitles come from your transcript, so fix wrong words in the Subtitles view of the Script panel.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Connect Claude or ChatGPT to Tella's MCP server and ask it to update your subtitles. Its update_video tool sets captionGrouping to singleWord and takes a captionStyle for options like letter case and colors.
Yes. Tella burns single-word captions into exports with subtitles. Shared videos show them on devices with hardware WebGPU support. Other viewers see the browser's default captions without your styling.
Yes. In Tella, the tella-short skill makes a trimmed 1080×1920 copy of your video with captions on. Afterward, ask the Tella Agent to switch them to one word at a time.