How to Edit Text on a TikTok Video

Adding text overlays is one of the most effective ways to make your TikTok videos more engaging and accessible, but mastering the editor can feel a bit tricky at first. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know, from adding and styling your text to timing it perfectly with your video. We’ll also cover advanced tricks and answer the age-old question: what can you do if you spot a typo after you’ve already posted?

Why Text on TikTok Matters (And How to Nail It)

Before getting into the how-to, it’s worth understanding why text is so powerful on a video-first platform. Think about your own scrolling habits. How often do you watch videos with the sound off? Text provides instant context, hooks viewers in the first three seconds, and makes your content understandable for everyone, everywhere.

From a marketing perspective, text is a game-changer. It lets you:

• Reinforce Key Messages: What’s the one thing you want your audience to remember? Put it in text.
• Add Context or Storytelling: Explain a process, tell a behind-the-scenes story, or provide commentary that adds another layer to your video.
• Drive Action with CTAs: A simple text overlay like "Link in bio!" or "Follow for Part 2" can significantly increase your conversion rate.
• Improve Accessibility: On-screen text acts as a form of subtitles, making your content inclusive for viewers who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or simply watching without sound.

The Basics: Adding and Customizing Text on Your TikTok

Let's start with the fundamentals. The TikTok text editor is packed with features that let you get creative and align your text overlays with your brand’s visual identity.

Step 1: Record or Upload Your Video

First, open the TikTok app and either record a new video using the `+` icon or upload an existing one from your camera roll. Once you have your clip ready on the main editing screen, you’re ready to start adding text.

Step 2: Access the Text Tool

On the right-hand side of the editing screen, you’ll see a collection of icons. Tap the “Aa” icon, labeled "Text." This will bring up a keyboard and the text editing interface, allowing you to start typing your message.

Step 3: Write and Style Your Text

Now, type out the text you want to appear on your video. Once you’ve written it, you can customize its appearance completely. Here’s what you can change:

• Fonts: Directly above your keyboard, you’ll see options for different fonts, ranging from classic and typewriter styles to more playful and modern scripts. Tap through them to find one that matches your video’s vibe.
• Colors: To the left of the font options, you'll see a color palette. Tap any of the colored circles to change your text color. You can even use the eyedropper tool to select a color directly from your video, which is great for maintaining brand consistency.
• Highlights & Outlines: To the far left of the options, there’s an “A” icon with a box around it. Tapping this allows you to add a background highlight, a simple outline, or a more opaque background to your text. This feature is fantastic for making sure your text is readable against a busy or visually complex video background.
• Alignment: Next to the highlight icon, you'll find the text alignment button. You can cycle between left-aligned, centered, and right-aligned text to position it perfectly within its box.

Once you’re happy with the look and feel, tap “Done” in the top-right corner. You can now use your finger to drag the text box anywhere on the screen or pinch to resize or rotate it.

Mastering Text Timing and Duration

Static text is good, but timed text is what separates beginners from pros. Making text appear and disappear at specific moments turns a simple video into a dynamic story. This is perfect for listicles, tutorials, comedic reveals, and syncing text with song lyrics or spoken words.

Step 1: Open the Timeline Editor

After you’ve added and styled a text box and placed it on your screen, tap on it once. A menu will appear with a few options. Select “Set duration.”

Step 2: Adjust the Timing

This will open a timeline editor at the bottom of the screen showing a strip of your video. Your selected text will be overlaid on top as a red bar. This bar represents when your text is visible.

• To change the start time, drag the left edge of the red bar to the exact moment in the video you want the text to first appear.
• To change the end time, drag the right edge of the red bar to the point where you want it to disappear.

You can use the video preview above the timeline to scrub through and pinpoint the exact timing. For example, in a "Get Ready With Me" video, you could have the text "Moisturizer" appear only during the few seconds you're applying that product. When you're finished, tap the checkmark at the bottom right to save the timing.

Advanced Text Tricks to Boost Engagement

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, you can start experimenting with more advanced techniques to make your videos stand out.

Using Text-to-Speech for Voiceovers

This incredibly popular feature automatically generates a voiceover that reads your text aloud. It’s used for everything from storytelling and tutorials to adding a layer of deadpan humor. It's also another great accessibility win.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Add a text box like you normally would.
2. Tap on the text box to bring up the menu.
3. Select the “Text-to-speech” icon (it looks like a person's head with soundwaves).
4. Choose one of the available voice options and tap "Done." The audio will now be added to your video.

Pro Tip: Remember to set the duration for the text box. The voiceover will only play while the text itself is visible on the screen according to the timeline.

Layering Multiple Text Instances

You aren’t limited to just one text box. You can add multiple overlays and give each one a unique style, position, and duration. This allows you to create more complex and engaging narratives.

To do this, simply complete the process for your first text box, then tap the "Text" icon on the main editing screen again to add a new one. Repeat this for as many text overlays as you need. Then, go into the duration settings for each and every one to set their individual appearance times. This technique is great for building suspense or revealing list items in a piece-by-piece fashion.

Creating the "Karaoke" or "Typewriter" Effect

This popular effect makes it look like text is appearing word by word. It’s perfect for highlighting lyrics or emphasizing a spoken sentence. While there's no single button for this, you can create it manually by layering text.

1. Start with your full sentence and set its duration for the entire time it should take to appear. Style it how you want.
2. Tap the text box and choose "Duplicate."
3. Edit the duplicated text to remove the last word. Adjust its duration to end just before the final word should appear.
4. Repeat this process, duplicating the text boxes and removing one more word each time, adjusting the duration for each clip to be progressively shorter.

It takes a bit of work, but the result is a professional-looking and highly engaging text animation that hooks viewers and keeps them watching.

The Big Question: Can You Edit Text After Posting?

Here’s the situation every creator faces eventually: you pour your heart into a video, post it, get your first few likes, and then you spot it… a glaring typo in your text overlay.

Unfortunately, the short and simple answer is no, you cannot directly edit the text on a TikTok video once it has been published. The text, stickers, and effects are "burned" into the video file when you upload it. But don't worry, you still have a couple of solid workaround options.

Solution 1: Save and Re-upload (The "Start Over" Method)

This is the best option if the error is significant or if the video hasn't gained much traction yet.

1. Go to the video on your profile.
2. Tap the three dots (…) on the right side of the screen.
3. Select “Save video.” This will download the video - with the original music - to your device’s camera roll.
4. Once it’s saved, delete the live TikTok from your profile.
5. Tap the `+` icon to start a new post, but choose "Upload" and select the video you just saved.
6. Now you can proceed to the editing screen, where you can remove the old text and add the corrected version before re-posting it.

The Catch: You will lose all the likes, comments, shares, and views accumulated on the original video. That's why this method is best used quickly after posting.

Solution 2: Pin a Comment (The "Quick Fix" Method)

If your video is already going viral and you can't bear to delete it, this is your best bet for small mistakes like harmless typos.

1. Open the comments section of your video.
2. Write a new comment correcting the typo. A simple "Whoops, meant to say *correction here*!" works great.
3. Once you’ve posted the comment, tap and hold on it.
4. Select “Pin comment."

Your correction will now appear at the very top of your comments section, making it the first thing people see when they engage. This is a transparent way to own up to a small error without sacrificing your video's momentum.

Final Thoughts

Mastering text editing on TikTok transforms your content from passive entertainment into an engaging, accessible, and story-driven experience. By styling text, timing it to your audio, and using advanced tricks like text-to-speech, you create videos that stop the scroll and communicate your message effectively, even with the sound off. And while you can't edit text after the fact, knowing how to quickly correct a mistake lets you stay in control of your content.

Getting everything just right before hitting publish becomes a lot easier when you plan your content ahead of time. In our experience, using a simple visual calendar to draft and schedule out posts helps us catch those small mistakes before they go live. A tool like Postbase was designed for exactly this, letting us seamlessly plan, schedule, and review all our video content across TikTok, Reels, and Shorts from one focused place, which is a lifesaver for our social team.