How to get animated text on instagram stories 2020
Building Text animations for Instagram Stories Building text animations for Instagram Stories
In August 2020, Instagram launched a set of dynamic and fun text styles followed by animations to give people more choices to express themselves on Stories and Reels. This was the first major update to Stories’ text tools since 2016, and we wanted to share how we approached some obstacles we encountered and what we learned along the way. With all the surprises thrown at us throughout the development of this project, we’ve included our own surprise for our users on iOS: We hid one extra text style for you. ✨ Comment if you find this Easter egg, but don’t ruin the surprise for others!
What we builtThe image below shows the full suite of text styles we provide on Stories today. The ones outlined are the new styles we added as part of the project. As we embarked on this project, one of our core principles was consistency. Previously, only certain styles, including Typewriter, Classic, and Neon, had decorated versions, and Modern v2 did not. With our new project, all styles have decorated and non-decorated versions.
We also updated the outdated single button toggle to a much simpler text style picker, which allows users to easily browse all the style choices and is consistent with the rest of the tools in the app.
Fonts on AndroidVery early in the project we found that although all the fonts that we wanted to add were packaged with iOS by default, they weren’t available on Android.
To solve this problem, historically we’ve just included the appropriate font files into our APK or Android Package, the file format Android uses to distribute and install apps. But the Instagram app has grown over the years, and we could no longer use this approach. Any addition of app size has a material negative impact on the app’s ability to run on lower-end devices. Also, according to“Shrinking APKs, growing installs,” a Google Play article, “For every 6 MB increase to an APK’s size, we see a decrease in the install conversion rate of 1%.
” The font files we needed added up to 4.5 MB, which would result in around 700K fewer installs of IG every month.
Instead, we tried Google’s Downloadable Fonts framework, which handles downloading and caching of fonts between apps and allows apps to share them. After we finished building it out, we realized the framework was missing a couple of essential fonts for our project.
Finally, we built a custom solution using Everstore, an internal BLOB (binary large objects) storage solution. Everstore is based on Haystack and provides a client API for automatically fetching, registering, and caching the assets. Instead of just building something for Stories, we worked with asset management experts to create a generic repository that allowed users to access fonts anywhere in the app. This approach had the added benefit of not relying on a third party, which gave us greater control over our product.
Dynamically evolving designsOne of the best things about this project was the close collaboration between engineering and design.
After getting the initial set of new text styles from our designers, engineers ran with those designs and typically came up with their own implementations on each platform. This involved a lot of math and deciphering the “noodles” of sketch files while building animations. Sometimes, however, technical limitations made it difficult to implement a particular style. This is where the live collaboration with design became an important asset.
For one particular text style, which we called Directional, we intended the decorated version to look like this:
The guidance from the design team was to build whichever was easier to implement. We tried a few approaches.
Drawing arcs
For the style on the right, we tried to use Apple’s addArcWithCenter:radius:startAngle:endAngle:clockwise: to draw arcs between the points that defined the shape of the text. However, we ended up with scenarios where the arcs wouldn’t meet each other perfectly.
In order to mitigate the misalignment, we tried to do the same thing using a bezier path for the outline instead.
We’d either append a quadratic curve or a line, depending on the shape of the text. After putting together this algorithm, we were disappointed to see that we ended up with the same result as above.
Creating a bezier path around many bezier paths
For the style on the left, we tried to create a giant bezier path that outlines many bezier paths. We started by creating bounding rectangles around each line of text. Then we rounded each of these bounding rectangles.
Next, we created a function that essentially defined the outline shape we wanted by returning a BOOL for whether a given point was inside or outside the outline shape.
Finally, we used this function to create a contour by visiting every point in a rectangle and assigning an edge type to each point based on the function, and then used an existing function to transform that contour to a bezier path. This solution worked well for most cases, but was noticeably laggy for large amounts of text. We consulted with the design team and decided to evolve Directional’s decorated version to have a filled background instead behind the text.
The Classic text style uses a word-by-word reveal animation. But what is a word? Separating strings by spaces seemed like a good place to start, but we quickly realized the approach would not generalize to all the languages with which people use Instagram. After a bit of digging, we discovered natural language processing APIs available on iOS (see NSLinguisticTagger, now replaced by the Natural Language framework), which could break up a string into its constituent tokens linguistically, and we implemented our word-by-word animation using that functionality.
During the animation, there are three ranges of text to consider: the range that has been fully revealed, a word that is currently being revealed, and the rest of the string that is hidden. We use our natural language word splitting algorithm to determine these ranges based on a given current time in the animation and the total animation duration.
Obstacles in working with textAndroid native crash debugging
At Instagram, we test each new feature and change to the app via A/B testing on small random samples of our user base before we roll it out for everybody.
This ensures that new changes don’t introduce measurable regressions and that we have good data-backed reasons for any additional complexity we want to include. Because we rolled out our new text fonts to a small number of users, we were able to compare to a control group that didn’t have the new fonts. To our surprise users in the test group were crashing slightly more frequently than our control group.
We reused a tested infrastructure that fetches from our storage layer and then locally caches on device. Because of our confidence in this infrastructure, we spent a month looking in the wrong direction to find the cause of our crashes. In reality, the problem was actually within that tested infrastructure, which failed to clean up the files it was allocating.
Dealing with ligatures, RTL text, emojis, and more on Android
The Typewriter and Literature text animations are character-by-character reveal animations that show a blinking cursor to mimic the visual effect of someone actively typing.
In stories on Android, all stickers and text that are added to edit a story are powered by Drawables. At first glance, it seems this could be achieved by storing character offsets to reference and draw each character individually in the reveal based on some animation progress. However, we had to consider quite a few text-specific features, which made our implementation a bit more challenging:
- Ligatures
- Emojis 🎉
- Text alignment (particularly important for RTL vs. LTR text)
- Text color (for some fonts: different portions of colorized text)
- Text emphasis
- #hashtags and @mentions
The last three features (color, emphasis, and underlines) are each powered by custom Spans, and we had to support all of these for every new text animation style provided by our designer. Initially, while working on this project, one of our teammates pointed out a bug where the animated text was broken for RTL languages, such as Persian.
From there, we found further bugs with RTL languages in our new styles and their emphasized versions, including problems with languages with ligatures.
Ligatures posed a problem for the character-by-character reveal animations since each is “a special character that combines two (or sometimes three) characters into a single character.” Thus, we can’t simply reveal each character the same way we do with English words. Instead, we want to build on top of each character as we reveal it.
For example:
The word love in Persian is عشق. Drawing each character individually would read ع ش ق, which is not legibly the same.
We took a couple of approaches to solve for this text animation style, each with its respective trade-off. The first was relying solely on TextPaint and Canvas#drawText(): The basic idea was to keep a reference to the full text that would be rendered, and only draw a portion of it based on the progress (from start to “latest revealed character”).
This would take care of ligatures since the text that would be rendered at every frame would be grouped together, as opposed to drawing each character separately.
In order to handle emojis, we took advantage of BreakIterator#getCharacterInstance() to properly reference the correct position of the latest revealed character in the text.
TextPaint offers some APIs for setting text color, so this approach solved for most of the features we were required to support, but it fell short of rendering underlines (for @mentions and #hashtags), text emphasis, and selective colorized text out of the box.
For example: For some fonts in stories, you can tag friends by adding an @username and select different portions of the text to be different #colors (we call this “selective colorized text”). 😛
One of the main reasons for this was that these were implemented as custom spans that would render our text differently based on where the span was applied (something that Canvas#drawText() would not account for).
To solve for this, we went with a different approach to cache StaticLayouts for portions of the text that we would render at different frames, and use those to draw each line and character based on the current animation progress. This had the added benefit of supporting Spannable text (to include the underlined/selective colorized portions of the text) as well as layout-specific parameters such as alignment (which helped us lay our text out properly for RTL vs. LTR languages).
A final note on Canvas APIs: We also considered using Canvas#drawTextRun() in our first approach, which would have been ideal for drawing individual characters and taking care of ligatures, but unfortunately it was only available on API 23+. In favor of keeping things simple and our codebase clean, we opted for StaticLayouts.
On iOS, we also faced similar problems with emojis and letters not being a single character. However, on iOS, the solution was more straightforward. Once we addressed the assumption that not every letter or emoji was a single character, many of our bugs were fixed.
One of the biggest takeaways from this project was actually nontechnical! Throughout the project, we had an engineering and design chat that we used to quickly iterate and get fast feedback on our implementations. The chat was limited to individual contributors (no managers allowed!), which made it a low-pressure environment where we could prioritize craft and polish. The engineering team felt free to bring up edge cases that they had questions about, and everyone in the chat, Android and iOS, benefited from hearing the designers’ feedback at the same time. The chat was also useful for quick iterations on small polishes. For example, quickly iterating on what the best line height multiple for a text style involved just sending a couple of screenshots back and forth. Read more about the benefits of a collaborative engineering/design chat here.
Another takeaway is the importance of regression testing/continuous testing for a project like this. With so many edge cases involved with text (emojis, RTL, ligatures), doing quality testing just once did not cut it — we were often surprised by the new things that broke after we fixed a bug.
Doing continuous quality testing in multiple languages would have helped.
How to Make Text Pop Up On Instagram Story in 3 Ways
Although epic images or funny videos are key ingredients to making your Instagram Story go viral, quite often you do need a few pop-up texts to draw viewers’ attention to crucial information, esp. for your business and brand image.
So, in this tutorial, we will walk you through how to make texts pop up on Instagram Story in 3 flexible ways. Then you can easily add animated text and pop-up sound effects and music for strong call-to-actions.
Here is what you will learn:
How to Make Text Pop up on Instagram Story by Instagram’s Native App
How to Make Text Pop up on Instagram Story with Pop-up Sound Effects and Music Online
How to Make Text Pop up on Instagram Story by CapCut
Here is a quick takeaway to make texts pop up on Instagram Story:
You can use Instagram’s native app to make multiple texts pop up with different text backgrounds and text animations on Instagram Story.
Free music is also available on the music sticker.
The drawback of Instagram’s native app is that you can’t make different texts pop up at different times and there are no pop-up sound effects. Besides, free music is also limited. To do so, you need other workarounds. Please read on to find out the solution. Check 11 best Instagram Story ideas for brands.
How to Make Text Pop up on Instagram Story by Instagram’s Native App
Though not perfect, Instagram’s native app offers you the easiest way to make texts pop up on Instagram Story. Here is what you can do to make your text come alive on Instagram Story.
How to make texts pop up on Instagram Story
Step 1
Launch your Instagram app and swipe left to open the app’s camera.
Step 2
Take or add a photo as the background of your Instagram Story.
Step 3
Add text: Tap the text icon (Aa) on the top right corner > type in your texts.
Step 4
Animate the text: Tap the text animation icon on the top right > then text animation of your chosen font shall automatically play. Since each font has its animation, you can change to different fonts to choose the text animations you like best, such as typing effects, etc. Then tap Done.
Step 5
Tap Your Story to fill in titles, add hashtags, etc. as you usually do to post an Instagram Story.
How to Make Text Pop up on Instagram Story with Pop-up Sound Effects and Music Online
If you plan to post on Instagram Story from your PC, another great workaround to create captivating text animations is FlexClip, a feature-packed and easy-to-use online video maker. No software download and editing experience are needed.
Create animated pop-up texts with sound effects and music for Instagram Story by FLexClip.
Create Now
Compared with Instagram’s native app on your phone, FlexClip allows you to:
Have full control of the duration of each animated text. So you can make multiple animated texts pop up at different times on Instagram Story as you wish.
Add multiple layers of royalty-free pop-up sound effects and music to accompany pop-up text animations, which takes your Instagram Story up a notch.
Discover more text animations such as dash, 3D flip, blur, neon, sway, tumble, typing effects, etc. and you may customize their speed and styles as well.
Select from tons of designer-made and fully-customizable Instagram Story video templates to create thumb-stopping Instagram Story in clicks away.
Preview
Holiday Instagram Story
Use This Template
Preview
Lifestyle Instagram Story
Use This Template
Preview
Cooking Instagram Story
Use This Template
Step 1
Select an Instagram Story video template, preview it and click the Customize button.
Select a free Instagram Story video template.
Step 2
Upload your photos/videos to FlexClip from PC or phone.
Upload your clips, images, and audio files to FlexClip.
Step 3
Drag and drop a photo/video to replace the default photo/video background.
Drag and drop to replace the default video background.
Step 4
Add pop-up text animations: With one pre-made text animation selected, type in your text > click Motion and select Bounce in or other text animations you like. You may also use the tools above to customize font, color scheme, text styles, layer, and position.
Add bounce-in text animations to the texts.
Bonus: Select more ready-made text animations
Want to add animated subscribe buttons and text and lower third text animations or animated texts for weddings, promos, etc? Just click the Text tab on the left menu, scroll down and browse hundreds of animated text templates and pick one and customize it into yours.
Super easy!
Add call-to-action subscribe buttons to Instagram Story.
Step 5
Add free pop-up sound effects and music: Click the Music tab > type “pop up” in the search bar > add the pop-up sound effects on the timeline > trim the sound effect and align it with the pop-up text animations or dynamic elements. You may also add free BGM to your Instagram story as well.
Add free BGM and pop-up sound effects to Instagram Story video.
Here is the resulting Instagram Story video from the above example:
Add animated texts with free pop up sfx and music to Instagram Story by FlexcCLip.
Create Now
Step 6
Preview and share: Click the Export button, you can download the video to your local PC or share it to YouTube, Google Drive, Dropbox, or use the clickable link and embed code for repurposing the video content for your blogs.
How to Make Text Pop up on Instagram Story by CapCut
Well, the last but not least option we recommend is CapCut, available to iPhone and Android users. It’s a free and mighty mobile app that allows content creators to create original videos with dazzling text animations for Instagram, TikTok, etc.
Make text pop up by CapCut video editing app
As opposed to limited text background and animated texts on Instagram’s native app, CapCut offers you hundreds of text animations, such as bounce, ease, glitch, zoom out, etc. in the category of in, out, and loop. You may also control the duration of the text animations as well.
If your video includes your audio narrations, CapCut has the Auto Captions feature to automatically generate text for your speech. You may also use text templates and stickers to spice up the text animations. Feel free to play with it.
Step 1
Click New Project and Import your video/photo to CapCut.
Import clips to CapCut
Step 2
Tap the Text tool > add text > type in your text > select Animation > choose an text animation to make texts pop up in the video.
Or you may also tap Text Template to select a trending text animation template for your Instagram Story.
Add animated texts to your videos by CapCut.
Step 3
Preview, set the video resolution, FPS, and export the video.
Now, It's Your Move
With great video content paired with compelling animated texts, you can accurately deliver the key information to viewers. Hopefully, you can use either FlexClip or CapCut to make eye-catching pop-up texts to grab viewers’ attention on your Instagram Story. If you find this tutorial helpful, don’t forget to share it with friends on Facebook, and Twitter and leave your comments for us. See you there.
Frank /
Passionate about photography, video-making and travel, Frank is a seasoned copywriter and a beloved father of 2-year-old daughter at FlexClip. He is always keen to share his latest discovery about video marketing and tricks to relive your memories through videos and images.
How to make animated text in Instagram Stories?
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Content
- 1 Animating text in Instagram stories
- 2 How to make text animation in Instagram post
- 3 Why there is no text animation in Instagram
You can make it loop, pop-up, or dim - there are many options.
You can animate text in the story editor. There are no options on Instagram to upload a picture or video with an animated caption to the feed. Therefore, you will have to turn to third-party applications or online video file editors.
But first, let's figure out how to make the text move in stories using the platform's functionality, and then through video editors.
Animate text in Instagram Stories
A short video tutorial step by step for Instagram Stories:
Use the steps below to make this animation on Instagram:
- Open Instagram and add a picture or video to your story.
- Then type in the text you want to add.
- The system itself will offer to tap on the button in the form of the letter Aa with asterisks. If not, find it on the top bar and click.
- The text is automatically animated. You can leave the motion as default or select the options as you scroll down the bottom margin to the left.
Captions on video stories can also move, but the animation will appear only at the beginning, then the text will be in the usual mode.
We also recommend reading ➤ how to make an inscription on a photo or video on Instagram.
How to make text animation in an Instagram post
If you want to add a video with an animated caption, use stories. Edit the picture or video story, then save the material to the gallery.
To do this, click on the arrow to download stories on the top panel. Then add content to the feed in the standard way, sign it, add hashtags and publish it.
The best Instagram content creation service ➤ Canva. Free templates for posts and Stories, a library of videos and sounds for free use ➤ Canva service.
If you don't have the animation feature in stories, you'll have to contact the editors. Let's analyze the principle of working with them using the example of Inshot and Text Animation Maker.
How to do it in the Inshot app:
- Download and install the app on your smartphone. It can be downloaded by both iPhone and Android owners.
- Open the utility and add a video file. The application does not edit images in this way - you can add a phrase, but you cannot animate it.
- Then select the T icon and enter the text.
- In the panel below the video, find the moving circles icon and tap on it.
- Select the movement style of the caption. Appearance and disappearance from below, above, right and left, blackout, loop are available.
- You need to download stories to your phone and add them to Instagram. To remove the watermark, you will have to tap on the cross on it in advance, and then see the result.
How to do it in the Text Animation Maker application:
- Download the application - it is also adapted for Android and iPhone.
- Open the utility and add an image or video file. To do this, you will first have to go to the editor and already fill in the material in it.
- Then enter the phrase in the top bar. It automatically becomes animated.
- Click the buttons next to the photo to change the animation mode. When you decide, save the file to your phone.
- Add animated text to a story or Instagram post and share the file.
This application allows you to place a caption next to a video or picture. To do this, select at the beginning the format is not 1:1, but 16:9.
Other editors you can use to create cool stories are ADOBE SPARK POST, HYPE TEXT, Tomo. Some apps work on iPhone but not on Android.
You can find alternatives by entering this name in the Google Play Market. The system will issue utilities with similar functionality. Read the description and download if you can make animation through them.
If you don't want or can't download the app, animate the caption online. Services like Pixiz will help. You cannot choose the animation style there, but you can write any phrase on the photo.
Why there is no text animation on Instagram
If you don't see the animation icon on Instagram Stories, most likely:
- Instagram hasn't been updated;
- did not update the operating system of the phone;
- The customized update has not been released in your country.
In the first case, go to the AppStore or Google Play Market and download the latest version of Instagram.
You can also long-press the Instagram icon on your desktop to bring up a menu with additional options.
In the functionality of some smartphones, applications can be updated through this item.
In the second case, go to the phone settings and select "About phone" or similar on Android and "General", "Software update" on iPhone. Check for updates and install them.
If your phone doesn't support one or both of the Instagram Stories updates, or it doesn't exist in your country yet, you'll need to work with editors.
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How to Add Moving Text to Instagram Stories and Photos on Android
a sea of photos, and standing out is hard work. Therefore, the need to be unique is always present. Many built-in tools such as stickers, GIFs, Face Filters and more allow you to create unique Instagram stories.
Wouldn't you like to do simple things a little differently? For example, Instagram doesn't let you add moving text to stories and posts. Also, you will need to use several font apps to improvise text. Here's a shame! No worries There are many different types of apps available in the Play Store, and some of them allow you to add moving text to Instagram stories and photos just as easily. Let's check them out!
Also on
How to Add Multiple Photos and Videos to Instagram Stories
1. Hype Text
When it comes to creating animated texts for Instagram, Hype Text is your best bet. Not only does it have many animation effects, but you can also control the speed of your animation. Plus, it has a pretty cool collection of fonts to give your Instagram stories a head start.
Hype Text has many animated effects
The interface of the application may seem a bit confusing at first.
But once you get the hang of it, it's pretty much a smooth ride. All animations, styles and colors of text fields can be easily accessed. Just swipe horizontally and say hello to many styles.
To use this application, select an image and then select an aspect ratio. Start by choosing the text you would like to see in your post. When you're done, click on the first icon to select font styles. Click the clock icon to adjust the speed.
Now the important part is choosing the animation. Click on the third icon and swipe left. Once done, tap the Tick icon to save your work. While Hype Text is a great app, it does have a small caveat. It watermarks your videos, which you can remove if you upgrade to the pro version.
Download Hype Text
2.
Hype TexT - Animated Text Video Maker No, I didn't repeat that the first application has the same name as the Hype Text application in cerdillac. Fortunately, the similarity ends with the name. The interface is better, as is the animation. Plus, it's easy to navigate and see the different changes in front of you.
When it comes to the app's features, it's possible to change the background color by adding your own image background, video size, and format (landscape or square). In addition, you can choose to save the clip as a GIF or video, depending on what is relevant to your Instagram project.
Using this app is easy. Just select an image from your phone's gallery. You can also choose a colored background. When you're done, enter your text and click on the play icon in the center. Choose the transition effect that best describes your post.
Download Hype TexT
3. Adobe Spark Post
Compared to the other two applications, Adobe Spark Post has limited animation effects.
However, you can be sure that these effects can transform your simple messages into something amazing and stylish. The advantage of Spark Posts is that you can animate both the text and the background image.
Select an image as a template and add the desired text by clicking on the icon. Click on Effects and select one of the three available transition options - Fade, Slide, Grow. Best of all, you can randomize the effects.
Unlike other apps, the transitions are subtle and don't throw words in the face. To animate an image, go to the Image tab and select one of the options.
Once you've customized the image to your liking, click "Save" > "Video" and the specified file will quickly go to your phone gallery.
Download Adobe Spark Post
Also on
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4. DP GIF Text Animation
Compared with the above apps, DP GIF Text Animation is simple and does not require much work.
It has a limited number of GIF templates that you can customize according to your requirements.
After you have entered the required text, you can adjust its size, color and font style. From dumb fonts to serious fonts, they have it all - a feature I really liked.
This allows you to share GIFs directly to Instagram (news feed or stories) or save them to your phone's gallery. We recommend saving the graphic and then publishing the story separately. It's a free app, but you'll find ads when you keep saving these GIFs.
Download Text Animation DP GIF
5. PicsArt Animator: GIF & Video
Although PicsArt Animator is an animation creator, you can use it to create many attractive animated clips for your Instagram posts. Although the interface looks a little complicated at first, rest assured that you will be able to customize the image to your heart's content. Since this is a normal animation maker, you will have to add your effects frame by frame.
You can customize the image according to your heart
Also, unlike the aforementioned applications, there are no pre-made fonts and you will have to enter text manually using gestures. It sounds complicated on paper, but trust me, posts like this can be a lot of fun.
To create an animation, tap the Plus icon at the bottom and select an image using the Gallery option. Click on the brush icon and write a small piece. After that, click the Plus icon at the bottom to add a frame.
Write the second text and so on. It is best to insert an empty frame between texts to slow down the animation. And if you're looking to add a bunch of fun elements, thankfully PicsArt Animator's stickers don't disappoint. Once you've taken all the frames, click on the checkmark icon to save it. The best thing about PicsArt Animator is that you can save and continue your work later.
