-
-
-
-
-
Only Captions-logo
Inspiration
I started Only Captions after trying several caption apps myself. I noticed that every app I used had something missing. Some had good caption styles but very limited templates, some had accuracy issues, and some made things like translating captions or working with longer videos unnecessarily complicated.
I wanted to make one simple app that could handle all of that in one place.
The main idea behind Only Captions is to make professional looking captions easy for anyone to create. Instead of spending time designing captions from scratch, users can choose from 25+ premium templates with one click. I focused especially on styles that work well for TikTok, UGC content, podcasts, and clips, where captions are a big part of the video.
Building the project
I built Only Captions using SwiftUI. For transcription, I use Groq with OpenAI's Whisper model because accurate transcription was one of the most important parts of the app for me. I also used AI coding assistant tools during development, which helped me move much faster while I was learning and building the product.
This is my first app, and I built the first version in a little over two weeks. I had to figure out many things along the way, from the actual caption generation and editing experience to video rendering and making everything simple enough for someone using a caption editor for the first time.
Challenges and what I learned
The hardest part for me was actually creating the caption templates. It was not just about making something look good. I had to research different caption styles, understand how they are used in short form content, and then make sure the text, spacing, positioning, animations, and alignment worked properly across different videos.
I also learned that building the feature itself is only one part of making a good product. Small details in the user experience matter a lot. I wanted someone who has never used a caption editor before to be able to open the app, add a video, generate captions, choose a style, and get a finished result in under a minute, while still giving experienced editors a full editor when they need more control.
Where it is now
I launched Only Captions on the App Store in the first week of August 2026. It currently supports AI auto captions, multilingual captions, one click translation, 25+ premium templates, manual editing, and high quality exports.
My goal is to keep improving it based on what users actually need. I built Only Captions because I saw the gaps while using other apps myself, and I want to keep solving those problems instead of making users switch between multiple apps just to create and manage captions.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.