Applying Descript Templates

Here at Descript Mastery, in addition to our free downloadable templates and Template Masterclass, we've made more custom templates for businesses than anyone else on the internet! To see all our Descript Template services, click here.

That said, creating and applying templates is not a beginner-friendly task. If you're new to Descript or video editing in general, this article will help demystify what templates are and how to properly apply them.

We also recommend you watch the video walkthrough about applying templates:

Applying Your First Template

The easiest way to practice applying templates and begin to understand how they work is by opening up a new, blank project.

Go to the Templates icon in the top of your Descript window and select "Gallery."

Gallery is where you will find the built-in templates made by Descript. These ones are very simple and not very nice looking but they are free and good to practice with.

The boxes you see are basically folders of templates. Inside of "Titles" are title screen templates for introducing a topic or person or adding textual context to your video. Inside of "Annotations" are things like animated arrows to point things out on the screen, circles, underlines, and other visual aids to add context to your video.

Go ahead and click on the one that says "Titles." You will now see a bunch of different types of titles. The first three are titles that you might see at the beginning of a video. The second three are ones you might use to introduce someone by adding their name and position or company. Let's start by using one of those. Click on the one that says "Basic Lower Thirds Title".

Once you click on it, it will be applied to your project.

From here, you can select any layer and modify it.

So click on the text that says "Lower thirds title" and begin to type in your name.

Next, select the layer below it that says "Lower Thirds Subtitle" and type in the name of your business or Youtube channel.

Lastly, select each of the two layers a second time and adjust the font, size, color, etc until it looks how you want it to.

And that's it! You've successfully applied your first template and they should make a bit more sense now.

Think of Templates as Containers of Layer

The important thing to point out is that templates are essentially a container of layers.

When you apply a template, you are adding one or more layers to your project.

In the case of the simple template we applied above, it added 2 layers - one for the title, one for the subtitle.

From there, you can adjust the layers exactly as you would any other layer in Descript.

And then, if you decide you don't want the template, you cannot "delete" the template you've applied. Instead, you delete the individual layers that make up that template.

And if you make changes to the layers in your project, it will not modify the original template.

Where to Use Templates

The most common template we make for clients is Youtube intros and outros. These are typically 3 to 5 seconds long with an animated logo and text and some music.

We also create a lot of captions, b-roll screens, quote screens, and transitions.

If you are doing a podcast, it is almost essential that you have a nice template for the different camera angles - for example one for each speaker individually and one for all speakers on the camera at once to show reactions. These can also feature things like audio waveforms in the background, social media handles, and names.

If you are creating a course, you will want a very short and professional intro and outro for each lesson in your course, probably with the title of the topic being taught.

In short, for anything you find yourself doing repeatedly in Descript, you will want to make a template for it to keep things consistent and so you can apply them with one click versus creating elements from scratch every single time.

Get Some Template Practice

Go on over to the Descript Mastery Templates page and get yourself some free downloadable templates so you can start applying them to your projects and learning more about how they work.

Templates are a steep learning curve but once you figure them out, they will significantly speed up your editing!