How to add a watermark to a video on a Mac
Putting your logo on a clip — for a client deliverable, a course, or just to keep your brand on a reel — shouldn't mean uploading your footage to a website that stamps its own watermark on top. Here's how to add a watermark to a video on a Mac in seconds, 100% offline: pick a corner and a size, and Crisp burns your logo in on-device with the audio kept.
The fastest way: just ask
Crisp has a plain-English box ("Or just tell Crisp what to do…"). Drop your video in and type what you want:
- add my logo — opens the Watermark lane, top-right by default
- add a watermark — same thing, in words
- watermark this — ready for you to pick the logo
- put my logo in the corner — corner placement
Crisp reads the request, switches to the Watermark lane and sets a sensible corner — you just choose your logo image and press the button.
The manual way: the Watermark lane
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Open Crisp and drop in your video
Get the free Crisp app for Mac and drag your clip onto the window. Nothing is uploaded: the whole job runs on your Mac.
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Ask for Watermark
In Crisp, select the clip on your timeline and use Logo in the Tools panel. Or just type “add my logo as a watermark” in the prompt bar — Crisp maps plain English to the same tool.
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Choose your logo image
Click Choose an image… and pick your logo. A PNG with transparency looks best, so only the mark shows and there's no box around it.
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Set the position and size
Pick a position — any of the four corners, top or bottom centre, or dead centre — and drag the size slider (5–40% of the video width; 18% is a good starting point). The logo is scaled to that size on every clip regardless of the file's own resolution, so a 200 px logo and a 2000 px logo land identically.
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Press Watermark
Crisp burns the logo in on-device with hardware encoding, keeps the audio untouched, and saves the result beside your original: one-time. Staged several clips? Crisp Pro watermarks each one in the same batch (batch is part of the one-time $129 Pro unlock; one file at a time is free).
The same size on every clip — and never off the edge
Crisp scales your logo to the size you choose as a share of the video width, so it looks consistent whether your logo file is tiny or huge, and whether the clip is 1080p or 4K. Placement is computed from the real, rotation-aware frame — so a portrait clip shot on a phone can't end up with a logo wider than the picture — and the logo's transparency is respected, so you get the mark and nothing else.
Logo watermark vs text watermark
Crisp has two ways to stamp a video, and they're deliberately different:
- Watermark places an image — your logo PNG. Use it for a brand mark or badge in a corner.
- Captions burns in styled text you can position and time. Use it for a name, handle, or © line when you don't have a logo image.
Rule of thumb: a picture → Watermark; words → Captions.
Where it sits, and why the margin is a percentage
There are seven anchor points: the four corners, top centre, bottom centre and dead centre. A watermark defaults to the top right and a caption to the bottom centre, which is simply where each is conventionally read and least likely to collide with a face or a lower-third.
The inset from that edge is expressed as a percentage of the video's height — 5% by default, and anything from 0 to 25 — rather than as a fixed number of pixels. This matters more than it sounds. A 40-pixel margin is a comfortable gap on a 1080p clip and an invisible hairline on a 4K one, so a pixel margin silently changes the design every time the resolution does. A percentage keeps the same visual spacing at any size, which is also what makes it safe to watermark a whole folder of mixed footage in one go and get a consistent result.
Because the position is an expression evaluated against the real frame — not a baked coordinate — a corner watermark stays in its corner on portrait, landscape and square clips alike, with no per-clip adjustment.
Crisp vs iMovie vs CapCut vs online watermark tools
| Crisp | iMovie | CapCut | Online watermarkers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Add a logo watermark | Yes — one lane | Picture-in-picture hack | Yes | Yes |
| Plain-English request | Yes | No | No | No |
| Transparent PNG respected | Yes | Yes | Yes | Varies |
| Keeps the audio | Yes | Yes | Yes | Varies |
| Adds NO watermark of its own | Free tier does — one-time $129 · or 4 × $32.25 removes it | Yes | Often on free tier | Usually |
| 100% offline, nothing uploaded | Yes | Yes | Cloud features | Uploads your clip |
| Price | Free tier + one-time $129 · or 4 × $32.25 | Free | Free + upsell | Free + upsell |
The irony of most "add watermark to video online" sites is that the free tier stamps their logo onto your export. Crisp adds only your mark, on-device.
Why offline matters for watermarking
- Your footage stays yours. The web tools upload your clip first. Crisp watermarks it entirely on your Mac — nothing leaves the device.
- No queue, no size cap. Cloud watermarkers throttle by file size and make you wait; Crisp works on the whole file locally.
- Only your mark. No surprise "made with…" badge added to your export.
- The audio is done right. A watermark changes only the picture; the sound is carried through in sync.
Watermark your first clip — offline
Free to try on your Mac. Drop in a logo, pick a corner, export: no account, no upload, and no subscription of Crisp's own.
Download Crisp for MacApple Silicon · macOS 26+ · Notarized
Watermarks, in detail
How do I add a watermark to a video on a Mac for free?
Use Crisp: drop your clip in, select the clip and use Logo in the Tools panel (or type "add my logo"), choose your logo image, set a corner and size, and press Watermark. It burns the logo in and keeps the audio, entirely on your Mac, with no account, no upload.
Can I choose where the watermark goes?
Yes — any of the four corners, top or bottom centre, or dead centre, at 5–40% of the video width. Placement uses the real rotation-aware frame, so a portrait phone clip never gets a logo wider than the picture.
Will the logo keep its transparency?
Yes. Crisp respects a PNG's alpha channel, so only the mark is drawn: no opaque box behind it. Export your logo as a transparent PNG for the cleanest look.
Can I add a text watermark instead of a logo?
For text — a name, handle, or © line — use the Captions lane, which burns in styled text you can place and time. The Watermark lane is for a logo image.
Does watermarking re-compress the video?
It re-encodes the picture, but Crisp hardware-encodes at high quality on Apple Silicon and writes the file locally and atomically, so the loss is negligible and you can check the result immediately.
Related guides
Add captions to a video · Make a video vertical · Crop a video