Position
The Position tool moves subtitles to another part of the frame. The usual reason is a collision: the film already has burnt-in captions along the bottom, or a player draws its own controls there, and the subtitles need to be somewhere else.
Choosing a position
The picker is a 3×3 grid laid out the way the screen is, so the tile you click is where the subtitles end up. Top is the one people want almost every time — it clears burnt-in subtitles and player chrome without moving the text off-centre.
Clear positioning is the opposite: it removes any positioning the file carries and lets the file's own styles decide again. It is what the tool starts on, so opening a file changes nothing until you choose a tile — and on a file with no positioning of its own, it stays that way.
What gets written, per format
As with colour, position is expressed differently in each format, and the tool writes what the file you opened will actually honour:
| ASS / SSA | An {\an1}–{\an9} override at the start of each line — the format's native numpad scheme, where 1 is bottom-left and 9 is top-right. |
|---|---|
| SRT | The same {\an} override. SubRip has no positioning of its own, but VLC, mpv and everything else built on libass read the tag; players that do not simply ignore it and show the subtitles where they always were. |
| WebVTT | Real cue settings — line, align and position — rather than markup, which is how WebVTT expresses position. Browsers honour these, so a repositioned VTT works on the web as well as in a desktop player. |
Typesetting is left where it is
An ASS file may place a line at exact coordinates with {\pos(…)} or animate it with {\move(…)} — a sign on a wall, a caption tracking an object. Those tags are not alignment and are left exactly as they are, so a typeset release keeps its signs in place while its dialogue moves.
Where a line already carries an alignment override, the new one replaces it rather than being added in front of it, so running the tool twice does not leave two competing tags behind. Anything else in the same override block survives.
In WebVTT, only line, align and position are rewritten; a cue's region, size or vertical settings are left alone.
If nothing moves in your player
For SRT, positioning depends on the player. VLC, mpv, IINA and anything else that renders subtitles through libass will move them. Some smart TVs and hardware players ignore the tag — the subtitles still display correctly, just in their usual place. If the target is a device you cannot test, converting to ASS first gives you the best chance, since positioning is native there.