Skip to main content
Turn on Single-word captions under Active word in Subs → Edit style to show only the word being spoken. Use them when you want fast, social-style captions instead of multi-word subtitle lines.

Turn on single-word captions

  1. Open your video in the Tella editor.
  2. Click Subs in the toolbar, or press S.
  3. Click the settings icon on your selected subtitle style.
  4. Under Active word, turn on Single-word captions.
Your editor preview updates immediately. The setting also applies to shared videos on devices that support styled subtitles and to exports with burned-in subtitles. On devices where the watch-page subtitle renderer is unavailable, viewers see the browser’s default captions instead. See Style subtitles. To return to multi-word subtitle blocks, turn Single-word captions off. You can then use Lines under Layout to choose whether each block can span one, two, or three lines.
Single-word captions and active-word effects are different. Single-word captions show one word at a time. The Text, Background, and Fade the rest effects keep the subtitle block visible while emphasizing the current word.
Last modified on September 28, 2026