How to add text in Premiere Pro
The Type tool puts words on the picture as a clip of their own. Style them in the Properties panel, keep them inside title safe, set when they arrive and leave, and retype every title from one list when the cut changes.
To add text in Premiere Pro, select the Type tool, click in the Program Monitor and type. Right-click the title and choose Edit Properties to change its font, size, color, outline or background. The title is its own timeline clip: trim its edges to control when it appears and disappears.
Put text in after the picture timing, sound and color have settled. The title sits against the shot below it, so a late change to the cut can leave the words over the wrong shot. The Graphics tab, covered below, makes those titles easier to find again.
Put the words over the shot
Start with a sequence open in the Timeline panel and footage already in it. Window > Workspaces > Captions and Graphics brings the text and graphic panels together (Alt + Shift + 4 on Windows, Opt + Shift + 4 on macOS). These are default shortcuts; your keyboard preset can change them.
The track stack, top to bottom: V2 title, V1 interview; A1 dialogue. Keep the title on a video track above the shot it names. The transparent area around its letters lets the footage show through.
- Park the playhead on the shot the words belong to. The Program Monitor now shows that frame, and that is where you will type. The exact first and last frame of the title come later, so anywhere near the start of the shot is close enough.
- Select the Type tool in the Tools panel. Hover over the tool to see its name and the shortcut for your keyboard preset; some Adobe pages call it the Text tool.
- Click in the Program Monitor where the first letter should sit, and type. The words appear over the picture, and a text clip appears in the timeline.
- Click the Selection tool, the default tool, before you reach for any shortcut. Then read the title once: a stray letter at the end of the words means the cursor was still in the text when a key went down.
- Look at the timeline. The text clip should sit on a video track above the footage, as in the stack line. If it landed under the footage or under another picture clip, drag it up onto a free video track above them.
If the Tools panel is hidden, use Graphics and Titles > New Layer > Text. To find or change a shortcut for that command, open Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts on Windows or Premiere > Keyboard Shortcuts on macOS. Adobe's shortcut editor shows the mapping for your current preset.
Park the playhead a second before the title and play past its end. The words should appear over the intended shot and stay readable. If they're missing, first check that the playhead is inside the text clip and that the clip sits above the footage; an opaque clip on a higher track can cover it.
If your tutorial opens Essential Graphics
Adobe now calls Premiere Pro Adobe Premiere. Older tutorials may style text in the Essential Graphics panel. With version 25.0, many Essential Graphics editing functions moved to the Properties panel, which shows the most used controls for whatever is selected in the timeline. Templates have their own Graphics Templates panel, and with a graphic selected the Properties panel can offer quick actions that open it. Follow the tutorial's idea and find the control in Properties.
Make the words readable in the Properties panel
Select the graphic clip in the timeline, then right-click the words in the Program Monitor and choose Edit Properties. You can also open Window > Properties. Select the text layer you want to change inside that panel; selecting the footage instead gives you footage controls.
- Text holds the font, font style and size. Paragraph Alignment controls the text within its box; Tracking, Kerning and Leading change the spacing.
- Appearance > Fill is the color of the letters.
- Appearance > Stroke draws an outline as Outer, Inner or Center, and a title can carry more than one stroke.
- Appearance > Background puts a box behind the words. Adobe's list of text parameters places Background in Appearance between Stroke and Shadow, with its own Background Styles.
- Appearance > Shadow sits under Background, and Mask with Text closes the section.
Check the words against the lightest and busiest part of the shot, then view them at the size your audience will watch. I'd use Background on a busy shot because it gives every letter a consistent ground; increasing Font Size alone leaves the same moving detail behind the letters. On a calm shot, a thin Stroke can give the title enough separation.
Give the next titles the same look
Once one title looks right, store its look rather than copying values by hand. Only the Text and Appearance settings make up a text style. To save the look as a style, click the plus icon at the upper right of the style menu and choose Create style. Name the style, then choose where to save it. Save to Project links this text layer to the style and adds the style to the project as an item; Save to Local styles keeps it for future projects in the style browser.
A title style carries Text and Appearance, but not position. Align and Transform travels with a style for captions only. Use the same guide or frame alignment for each title in a series.
Keep titles inside title safe and line up a series
Click the Settings button below the Program Monitor and choose Safe Margins, or choose it from the monitor's panel menu. The outer box is action safe; the inner one is title safe. Adobe's standard margins are 10% for action safe and 20% for title safe, adjustable in Project Settings. Keep the letters, stroke and background inside the inner box. These guides don't appear in previews or the exported file. They refer to this sequence's frame, so check a vertical delivery sequence separately.
To center a title, right-click it in the Program Monitor and choose Align to Video Frame, then Center Horizontally or Center Vertically as needed. This aligns the title to the picture; Paragraph Alignment in Text aligns the words inside their text box.
A lower third that returns for every speaker should land in the same spot each time, and since a title style leaves position behind, guides do that work:
- Select the Program Monitor and choose View > Show Rulers (Ctrl + R on Windows, Cmd + R on macOS).
- Drag a guide from a ruler to the line where the lower thirds should sit. For an exact position, choose View > Add Guide, set its orientation, color and position, then select OK.
- Choose View > Lock Guides so the line stays put while you drag titles against it. Show Guides toggles it with Ctrl + ; on Windows or Cmd + ; on macOS.
- Turn on View > Snap in Program Monitor (Ctrl + Shift + ; on Windows, Shift + Cmd + ; on macOS). Drag the title toward the guide until it snaps into alignment.
Guides persist across projects and sessions. After delivery, turn off View > Lock Guides if it's enabled, then choose View > Clear Guides to remove them.
If text layers won't move together or snapping behaves incorrectly on an older release, version 26.5 fixed both problems. Finish a live project before updating; place its titles individually in the meantime.
Play across each title with Safe Margins on. From the title's first frame to its last, every letter, the stroke and the box stay inside the inner box, and a series of lower thirds sits on the same line each time one comes up.
Set when the words arrive and leave
A text clip's two edges are its timing, callouts 2 and 3 in the timeline figure. Select the clip in the Timeline panel, hover over an edge until the trim icon appears, and drag the clip's edge to the frame where the words should start or stop. Drag the body of the clip to move the whole title without changing its length.
Read each edge against the cuts on V1. A title that starts on the first frame of a shot reads as part of that cut; one that starts a few frames in reads as arriving on its own. Both work. The one that looks like a slip is a title whose end edge runs a frame or two past a cut into the next shot, so zoom in on that edit point before you move on.
Choose the fade by what should disappear: a dissolve fades the entire graphic clip, while layer Opacity fades only the selected text layer.
- Whole graphic: drag a Dissolve from the Effects panel onto the start of the graphic clip for the fade in and its end for the fade out. Any other layers inside that graphic fade with it.
- One text layer: select the graphic clip, then select the text layer inside Properties. At the title's first frame, enable animation for Opacity under Align and Transform and set 0%. Move a few frames later and set 100%. At the end, add a 100% keyframe before a final 0% keyframe. Layer animation in Properties creates the keyframes; Window > Effect Controls lets you refine them.
Play from a second before the title to a second after it. The words should fade up and away on the frames you chose, with no frame of text flashing before the fade in or hanging on after the fade out.
Retype titles after the cut moves
Open the Text panel, which the Captions and Graphics workspace already shows, and choose its Graphics tab. The Graphics tab lists every piece of text in the active sequence, Premiere titles and After Effects Motion Graphics templates alike, each with a thumbnail, its timecode range and the number of the video track it sits on. Double-click a text field to retype it in place; Filter tracks narrows the list when a long sequence carries many titles.
When timing changes after the titles are in, that list is your checklist. Go down it, compare each title's range with the shot it names on V1, and drag or trim the text clips that no longer match. Then play each one across its edit points, because a trim on V1 can leave a title starting on the wrong side of a cut or a fade ending over the next shot.
Text layer or caption track
Both put words on screen, and they do different jobs. A text layer is what this page builds: a title, a name in the lower third, a label, placed and styled by hand on a video track, with a linked style for its look. Captions sit on their own caption track, made from a transcript; they export burned into the picture or as a separate .srt file, and Adobe advises adding them when the edit is finished or close to it. Their look travels as a track style, which carries position as well.
Use a caption track for dialogue that needs to be read. Keep a name, label or occasional title as a text graphic, so you can place and time it independently of the speech.
Play every title at the size it will be watched
Before the file leaves, play the sequence from a few seconds before the first title to a few seconds after the last, at the size it will be watched. For a video headed to phones, that means the exported file opened on a phone, where a title that reads well on a desktop monitor can turn small and thin. Each title should come up on its shot, stay inside the frame and leave clean. When the words are right and you want them to move, animate the text next.
