How to make a promo video that works with the sound off

Where your video will be silent

It helps to be precise, because "most people watch muted" gets repeated without sources. The stores are documented: Apple's App Previews page says "By default, app previews play with the sound muted, so consider using copy to add additional context to your footage." Google's store listing guidance says "only the first 30 seconds autoplays" and recommends captions "to help users who are deaf or hard of hearing"; that autoplay is silent.

Social feeds start videos without sound and let the viewer turn it on. Reels and TikTok are the partial exception: people often browse them with sound on, which is why Meta's Reels ad specs call audio "optional but strongly recommended" while still recommending captions. Even there, a share of viewers is in a quiet office or on a train.

So the design brief is simple. The video must land its point in silence everywhere. Where sound exists, it adds. It never carries.

Write the text track first

The mistake behind most sound-dependent videos is the order of writing. Someone writes a voiceover, records it, and then adds text cards by shortening the sentences. Shortened sentences read like fragments, and the important idea often lives in the half that got cut.

Reverse it. Write the text cards as the script, one card per screen the video will show:

Your runs, turned into a game
Add a habit in one tap
Friends see your score
Weekly challenges, new every Monday

Then, if the video will run somewhere with sound, expand each card into a spoken sentence. The card is the guaranteed message; the voice is the bonus. Word counts per length are in the 30 second script template.

Rules that keep cards readable in a muted feed:

• Five to seven words. Anything longer needs a second look, and nobody gives a feed video a second look.
• On screen for two to three seconds, the same time the screen it describes is on screen.
• Sentence case, one line where possible, two at most.
• Numbers as digits, verbs at the front. "Book a table in two taps" beats "Two-tap table booking is available".

Let motion replace the pointing words

Voiceovers are full of pointing: "here you can see", "simply tap the button", "notice how". In a muted video the picture has to point instead.

A slow zoom toward the element that matters says "look here". A brief highlight ring or a slight dim of everything else says "this button". A cursor or a finger-shaped touch indicator, which Apple explicitly allows as an overlay on screenshots and previews, says "tap". The order of clips says "and then".

We often storyboard a muted preview as a sequence of "look here" moments, one per clip, and only after that decide what the text card says. If a clip has no obvious place to look, it is usually the wrong clip.

Timing for readers, not listeners

People read slower than they listen. A voiceover can deliver a line in a second and a half; the same line as a card needs at least two seconds plus a moment to find it on screen. That changes the pacing of a muted video:

• Fewer cards than you think: six or seven in 30 seconds.
• Cards appear a beat after the clip starts, so the eye lands on the screen first and the text second.
• Cards leave before the clip ends, so the last thing seen is the app, not a fading word.
• No two cards on screen at once, and no card over a busy transition.

If the timeline looks empty compared with a voiced version, that is normal. Silence needs room.

Keep the message in the safe area

Muted video runs inside interfaces, and the interfaces cover the edges. Meta's Reels specs ask advertisers to keep important elements out of the top 14 percent, the bottom 35 percent and the outer 6 percent on each side. TikTok publishes safe zone templates that vary by format and caption length. The App Store crops nothing but places a play control and, in search results, shows the preview at a small size.

In practice, text cards live in the middle band of a vertical video, and in a landscape video they stay away from the bottom fifth. A card that sits under a platform's caption is a card nobody read. The frame for each platform is in vertical or horizontal.

Captions are not the same as text cards

A text card is the message; a caption is the voiceover written down. Muted feeds benefit from both, but they do different jobs and they should not fight for space. If the video has a voiceover, burn in captions in a small consistent style at the bottom of the safe area, and keep the text cards larger and higher. If it has no voiceover, there is nothing to caption; the cards are the whole script.

Google Play's captions recommendation is about accessibility, which is one more reason to include them on any cut with speech.

When a voiceover still earns its place

Paid placements with sound on, such as Reels and TikTok ads that hook in the first second with a spoken line. Landing page videos that the visitor chooses to play. Sales emails and demo requests, where the viewer sits down to watch. In all of those, a voice adds warmth and detail the cards cannot fit.

Even then, mute the finished video and watch it once. If it stops making sense, the voice is carrying something a card should carry.

A ten second test

Before exporting any cut, play it muted at the size it will actually appear, on a phone, once, without pausing. Then answer three questions: what is the app called, what does it do, and what would I do next. If any answer is missing, the fix is a card, a zoom or a clip order, never "turn the sound on".