---
title: "Text overlays: hooks and titles that stay apart from captions"
canonical: "https://blitzreels.com/changelog/text-beyond-subtitles"
---

# Text overlays: hooks and titles that stay apart from captions

Milestone: 2025-11-09
Article published: 2026-09-26
Status: Product update

November 2025: add text overlays to your videos. Write a hook or a title, style it, place it on the frame and time it on its own track, apart from captions.

![Two vertical clips with a text hook placed above the spoken captions.](https://blitzreels.com/images/changelog/text-beyond-subtitles.jpg)

## Some text isn’t part of the speech

Captions repeat what the speaker says, line by line. A lot of useful text on a short says something else, like a hook in the first second or the name of the step in a tutorial. In a clip about your first year on YouTube, you might take ten seconds to reach the point, while a line like “What I’d do differently in year one” tells viewers right away why they should stay.

If you type that into the captions, you change the transcript, and your text disappears as soon as the sentence ends. That kind of text needs a layer of its own, one you can write, style and time freely.

## What arrived in November 2025

On November 9, 2025, text overlays joined the editor. A Text tab in the sidebar let you create an overlay, add it to the timeline or take it off again. Each overlay became its own item on the timeline, so you could drag it to choose when it appears and drag its edges to choose how long it stays.

You could select an overlay on the preview and set it up in its properties:

- The text itself.
- Font, size, weight, alignment and color.
- A background and an outline.
- Its position, padding and a safe-zone margin from the edges of the frame.

Captions kept working as before. Editing a title never touched the transcript, and changing your caption style never changed your title.

## How to add a hook today

The Text tab has since become Text & hooks. To put a hook on the first seconds of a clip:

1. Open Text & hooks in the editor sidebar.
2. Click Add a hook. Add text gives you a plain line, and Add a lower third gives you a name with a role.
3. Type your line in the Text field, then pick a font, a size and one of the color themes.
4. Drag the hook on the preview to a spot that leaves faces and captions clear.
5. On the timeline, drag its right edge so it only stays up for the first few seconds.

Turn on Animate to fade the text in and out. Long hooks widen to 90% of the video width, so a longer opening line still fits.

## Ideas for your next clip

A few ways to use text overlays:

- A podcast clip with the question being answered at the top, and a lower third with the guest’s name.
- A tutorial with the name of each step as a short title.
- A list video with a small label like “Tip 2 of 5” that changes with each point.

To close a clip, the Titles & graphics tab next to Text holds an End screen. [The story on hooks, lower thirds and end screens](https://blitzreels.com/changelog/hooks-lower-thirds-and-end-screens) covers it, along with the watermark you can move and resize.

## Add text from the CLI or the API

Text overlays aren’t limited to the editor. With the BlitzReels CLI, `blitzreels text add` puts a text overlay on a project’s timeline at the time and for the duration you choose, and `text update`, `text list` and `text remove` manage the ones you have. The [Overlays API](https://blitzreels.com/docs/overlays) does the same from your own code.

That helps when you produce clips in batches. You can add the same kind of hook to every clip of a batch, then open any of them in the [online video editor](https://blitzreels.com/editor) to adjust the wording. Text overlays sit on the same [multi-track timeline](https://blitzreels.com/features/pro-timeline) as your video, audio and captions.

## Questions

### What’s the difference between captions and text overlays?

Captions come from the transcript and follow what the speaker says. Text overlays are text you write yourself, like a hook or a title, with their own style, position and timing on the timeline.

### How do I add a hook at the start of a video in BlitzReels?

Open Text & hooks in the editor, click Add a hook and type your line. Then drag its edge on the timeline so it only shows for the first seconds.

### Can I add a guest’s name and role on screen?

Yes. In Text & hooks, Add a lower third creates a two-line overlay for a name and a role or company, which you edit and place like any other text.

### Can I add text overlays without opening the editor?

Yes. The BlitzReels CLI has text commands to add, update, list and remove overlays, and the Overlays API does the same from code.

## Open your next clip with a hook

Add text overlays, hooks and lower thirds in the online editor, separate from your captions.

[Try the video editor](https://blitzreels.com/editor)

We wrote this story later, looking back at our product history. The date at the top marks the work described here; features and access may have changed since then.