YouTube Shorts text to speech: how to add a voice
YouTube Shorts has its own text to speech. In the Shorts editor you can turn on-screen text into narration with an automated voice, the same trick that made TikTok voices popular. It arrived on Android in July 2024 and on iPhone in early 2025.
This guide shows how to use it, where its limits are, and how to give a Short a narrator or a character voice that the built-in tool does not have.
Add text to speech in the Shorts editor
In the YouTube app, tap the plus button and record or upload your clip. In the editor tap the text button (Aa), type the line and place it on screen. Then tap the text box, choose a voice and use the timing control to set when the line is spoken. The tool works in the YouTube mobile app, not on a computer.
What the built-in voices can do
You choose between four automated voices, and there are few controls beyond that: no character voices, no accents to pick and little say over tone or pacing. Punctuation still helps: commas and full stops add pauses, and a question mark lifts the end of a line. Keep each text box short, because the voice reads exactly what is on screen.
A narrator or character voice instead
For a distinctive voice, make the narration first: open a voice in the SuperClonica catalog, such as a narrator, an announcer or a game, anime or cartoon character, type 30 to 100 characters and download the line free, with no account. Put the audio under your clip in a video editor, as our CapCut guide shows, and upload the finished video as a Short. For a whole series of scripts, the free engine voices them on your computer: python -m pip install superclonica-cpu.
Write for a Short
A Short lasts seconds, so write one idea per line and put the hook first. Read the line aloud once before you voice it: if you stumble, the voice will sound awkward too. Our guide to faceless YouTube channels has more on narrating whole videos.