Edit text on the canvas

You can type straight into a text clip in the preview, and see the words wrap where they’ll sit in the picture.

Keys: Return⇧ReturnEsc
Where: Double-click a text clip in the preview
Agent tools: set_text

Type on the canvas

Move the playhead so the clip is on the canvas.
Double-click the clip. The editor opens over it with all the text selected.
Type. The editor grows and wraps as you go, the way the text will once applied.
Press Return to apply.

The editor uses the clip’s own font, tracking and line spacing at the canvas’s zoom, so the lines break where they will in the picture. It draws in the interface’s own colours, not the clip’s, so you can always read what you’re typing.

UPPERCASE text shows as you typed it. A rotated clip’s editor stays upright, and the text you apply is the same either way.

Opening the editor leaves crop mode. Double-clicking a video clip, image clip or freeze frame enters it.

Apply the text

Any of these applies the text and closes the editor:

Return or keypad Enter
Tab, unless Full Keyboard Access is on in System Settings
A click elsewhere in the window, below its title bar

Applying is one undo step, Edit Text. If the words haven’t changed, there’s no undo step. After Return the keys go back to the canvas, so its single-letter keys work again.

Start a new line

⇧Return, ⌥Return, ⌘Return and ⌃Return all start a new line. Caps Lock and fn don’t count, so Return with either of those still applies.

Leave with Esc

Over unchanged text, Esc closes the editor at once.

Over changed text, a sheet asks “Apply your changes to this text?”, and reminds you that “Return applies while you type; ⇧Return starts a new line.”

Button	What it does
Apply	Keeps your text and closes the editor. It’s the default, on `Return`.
Revert	Closes the editor and drops your changes.
Cancel	Goes back to editing. `Esc` in the sheet does the same.

While the sheet is up, clicking away doesn’t apply the text behind your back.

Use an input method

While an input method is composing, Return, keypad Enter and Esc go to the input method, not the editor. They do their usual jobs again once the composition ends.

Good to know

You can only double-click what’s on the canvas, and a clip on a locked track can’t be picked there. To change those words, use Content in the Text sub-tab.
The editor always changes the clip’s own words, even with an action selected. To change the words at an action’s end, use Content.
On a caption timed word by word, changing the number of words drops the page’s timing. See Text clips.