How to Add Text to Each Picture on TikTok

Adding text to each picture in a TikTok slideshow is one of the best ways to turn a simple collection of photos into a captivating story. It allows you to control the narrative, pace the reveals, and keep your audience hooked until the very last frame. This guide goes beyond the basics to show you exactly how to add, time, and style individual text overlays for every single photo in your TikTok video.

Why Bother Adding Text to Each Photo?

Before we get into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." In a fast-scrolling environment like TikTok, holding attention is everything. A single, static block of text that stays on screen for an entire 15-second slideshow is easy for viewers to read once and then swipe away. But when you time your text to appear with each new photo, you create a dynamic experience. You're essentially building a mini-movie, and this method gives you a few powerful advantages:

• Better Storytelling: You can guide the viewer through a narrative, whether it's a travel recap, a recipe walkthrough, a personal story, or a product tutorial. Each photo gets its own caption, context, and moment to shine.
• Increased Engagement: Tapping into the reader's curiosity keeps them watching. When text syncs with quick photo changes, people stay engaged to read the next part of the sentence or the next step in the process. This extended watch time is a positive signal to the TikTok algorithm.
• Enhanced Clarity: For educational or instructional content, linking a specific piece of text to a specific image is far more effective. You can point out details in each photo, provide clear, ordered instructions, or label items distinctly.

Step 1: Get Your Photo Slideshow Ready

First things first, you need to create the slideshow itself. The process is straightforward, but making sure you get the order right from the start will save you a lot of headaches later on.

1. Open the TikTok app and tap the plus icon (+) at the bottom center to start creating a new post.
2. On the creation screen, look to the bottom right and tap the "Upload" button.
3. This will open your phone's camera roll. In the bottom-left corner of the "Select" view, tap the circle for "Select multiple." This is the key to creating a slideshow instead of just posting one photo.
4. Now, tap on the photos you want to include in the sequence you want them to appear. As you select them, you'll see a number appear on each thumbnail, showing its place in the slideshow.
5. Once you've selected all your photos, tap the "Next." button.

TikTok will now stitch your photos together into a video clip. You might notice it defaults to a kind of Ken Burns-style zoom effect. You can change this by tapping "Edit" in the top right and playing with transitions, or just leave it as is. For now, we'll focus on the text.

Step 2: Adding and Styling Your First Piece of Text

Once your slideshow is loaded into the main editor, you'll see your clip playing on a loop, with editing options on the right-hand side. This is where the magic begins.

1. On the right-hand menu, tap the "Text" option, represented by an "Aa" icon.
2. An on-screen keyboard will appear. Type the text you want to show over your first picture. For example, if you're making a travel diary slideshow, your text could be something like, "Our trip to Italy started..."
3. Now, customize it. Above the keyboard, you have several options:
   • Fonts: Tap the font names like "Classic," "Typewriter," or "Handwriting" to change the style.
   • Color: Tap the colored circles to change the text color.
   • Highlight/Background: Tap the "A" icon on the left to add a background or outline to your text, making it more readable against a busy photo. You can cycle through different styles of highlighting.
   • Alignment: Tap the alignment icon (looks like lines of text) to switch between left-aligned, center-aligned, or right-aligned.
4. Once your text looks just right, tap "Done." in the top-right corner. You'll see your text box appear as an overlay on your video preview. You can drag it around the screen and pinch to make it bigger or smaller.

Step 3: Setting the Duration - The Most Important Part

This is the step that separates a basic slideshow from a thoughtfully crafted one. You're going to tell TikTok exactly when this first piece of text should appear and disappear, timing it perfectly with your first photo.

1. Tap once on the text overlay you just created. A white box will appear around it, and a small menu will pop up with options like "Edit," "Text-to-speech," and "Set duration."
2. Tap on "Set duration."
3. This will open TikTok's clip editor. At the bottom, you'll see a timeline of your video, and below that, a red bar representing your text layer.
4. By default, the text is set to appear for the whole video. You need to change this. Using your finger, drag the right handle of the red text bar to the left. As you drag, the video preview above will play. Stop dragging right when the first photo is about to transition to the second photo.
5. You can get very precise here. If you miss, just drag the handle back and forth until the text disappears exactly at the cut. The start point of the text should already be at the beginning of the clip, so you likely only need to adjust the endpoint.
6. Once you're happy with the timing, tap the checkmark ✓ at the bottom right to confirm.

You'll be taken back to the main editing screen. Now if you play your video, you should see your first piece of text appear over the first photo and then vanish right as the second photo appears. Perfect!

Step 4: Layering and Timing Text for Every Other Photo

Now, you just repeat the process for all of your remaining photos. It sounds tedious, but once you do it once or twice, you'll get into a fast rhythm.

1. To add text for the second photo, tap the "Text" (Aa) icon on the right-hand menu again. Do not edit your existing text. Add a new one.
2. Type and style the text for your second photo. For example: "...in the beautiful city of Rome. 🇮🇹"
3. Tap "Done." A new, separate text box will appear on screen.
4. Again, tap this new text box and choose "Set duration."
5. You’re back in the timeline editor. This time, you'll see your original text snippet (timed for the first photo) and the new red bar for your second text snippet.
6. Drag the left handle of the new red bar so it starts exactly where your first text bar ended. This means this second text will appear the moment the second photo does.
7. Now, drag the right handle of the new text bar so it ends just as the second photo transitions to the third.
8. Tap the checkmark ✓ to save.

Continue this method - add new text, set duration, align start and end points - for every single photo in your slideshow. Each piece of text gets its own layer on the timeline, allowing you to create a seamless, flowing narrative.

A helpful tip: As you add more text layers, the timeline at the bottom can get crowded. You can use two fingers to pinch and zoom on the timeline itself, which expands it and gives you much finer control over the start and end points of a clip.

Creative Strategies for Text Overlays

Once you've mastered the technique, you can use these creative approaches to make your slideshows stand out even more.

Vary Your Placement and Style

Don’t feel like you must put every text overlay in the exact same spot. For one photo, you might place text at the top, and for the next, you might angle it along the bottom. Varying the color, font, or placement keeps the video feeling visually dynamic and helps draw the viewer’s eye to different parts of each photo.

Tell a Continuous Story

Think of your text as a single story broken into pieces. The popular "one word per photo" trend is a great example of this. Each photo swap reveals one more word of a longer sentence, building suspense or delivering a punchline at the end. An example for a fitness transformation:

• Photo 1 Text: "It"
• Photo 2 Text: "didn't"
• Photo 3 Text: "happen"
• Photo 4 Text: "overnight,"
• Photo 5 Text: "but it was worth it."

Use Text as a Q&A

You can also use pairing to your advantage. For one photo, have a text overlay showing a question someone has asked you ("What's your favorite thing about your job?"). On the next photo, reveal the answer ("Getting to be creative every single day!"). This is an excellent format for engaging directly with your audience's comments or FAQs.

After timing all your text perfectly, you can add sounds, effects, and anything else you want. Preview it one last time to make sure the timing feels right with your chosen music, write your caption, and then you're ready to share your perfectly-timed photo story with the world.

Final Thoughts

By treating each piece of text as its own adjustable layer, you gain complete control over your TikTok slideshows. Mastering the "Set Duration" feature transforms a simple collection of pictures into a purposeful story, giving you a powerful tool to hook viewers and share your narrative one frame at a time.

Crafting engaging, story-driven videos is a fantastic way to build a brand on social media. After creating several of these, the next logical step is planning when to post them. We built Postbase for creators and small businesses who need a clean, simple way to manage their social media without the headache. Our visual calendar is perfect for organizing your TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, allowing you to drag-and-drop posts to schedule weeks in advance. This means you can focus on making great content, knowing your publishing schedule is already taken care of.