Shorts tap-to-mute and clear screen: burn captions in with Sume

Short answer

YouTube's blog post on Shorts experience updates describes a clear-screen mode that hides icons and text, a tap to mute, 2x speed playback and a heart in place of thumbs-up, with rollout over time. Burned-in captions are part of the picture, so they stay visible when YouTube's own overlays are hidden. Sume Video Captions burns captions into an existing video URL, with styles such as slam, punch, tiktok-green and black-outline.

Whether a caption helps depends on the viewer. When someone taps to mute, captions carry the words; when they hide the interface, burned-in captions are still there.

What stays and what goes

Based on the YouTube post's description and how burned-in captions work.

Styling captions for Shorts

Video Captions takes a design block. typography.safe_width_ratio limits how wide the text runs, and placement.anchor_ratio sets where it sits vertically. Keep the text away from the bottom edge, where platform icons and the title usually sit when the interface is shown, and away from the right edge for the same reason. The Sume docs describe the controls; the exact safe area for Shorts is YouTube's to define, so test on a phone.

Pick a style for the content: black-outline for readability on busy footage, slam or punch for short emphatic lines, tiktok-green for a bold look. The docs say design is not supported on punch or tiktok-green, so use the placement and width controls with slam or black-outline only. Use authored cues with text, start and end when you need exact wording and timing, which skips speech-to-text.

• Keep one idea per line so a tap-to-mute viewer can follow.
• Leave room at the bottom and right for the interface when it is visible.
• Use authored cues for brand names, which speech recognition may misspell.
• Check on a phone with the interface both visible and hidden.

The caveats

YouTube describes these changes as rolling out over time, so not every viewer sees them yet. Do not rewrite a style guide around a rollout; keep captions readable in both states. Sume captions are burned in, so they cannot be turned off by the viewer. If you also want a toggleable track, publish a separate caption file.

For the heart change and keeping calls to action clear, see the heart post. For the wider creator updates, see Made on YouTube 2026.

A test routine

Play the finished Short three ways: with sound on and the interface visible, with sound off, and in clear-screen mode if your account already has it. In each case ask whether the message is still clear. If a caption collides with an icon in the interface-visible case, move it up with placement.anchor_ratio and rerun.

Keep a copy of the caption cues you authored. If you re-burn with a different style, Video Captions can start from an earlier caption job by source_caption_id, so you do not have to rebuild the timing.