Learn how to switch on, create and adjust captions when using YouTube.
Explore Google’s guide for using captions on YouTube here.
Switch on automated captions
- Open the video you want to watch.
- If captions are available, the CC icon
will be visible in the bottom right-hand corner of the video player.
- To turn on captions, select the CC icon.
- To turn off captions, select the CC icon.
The captions may be ones that have automatically been created by YouTube or ones that have been edited by the user to make them more accurate.
Switch captions on for all videos
- Select your profile picture
- Select Settings
- From the left-hand menu, select ‘Playback and performance’
- Tick or untick ‘Always show captions’
- Tick or untick ‘Include auto-generated captions (when available)’. This option turns on or off automatic captions for videos that do not have captions.
- Select your profile picture
- Select ‘Settings’
- Select ‘Captions’
- Select ‘Show captions’ to always show captions when they’re available.
- Open your device’s Settings app
- Go to ‘Accessibility’
- Under the ‘Hearing’ section, select ‘Subtitles & captioning’
- Select ‘Closed Captions + SDH’ to always show captions when they’re available.
Add captions to a video
YouTube has lots of options for adding captions. Autogenerated captions are created automatically after uploading a video. However, these can contain errors.
It is possible to add your own captions as part of the video upload process but the process described here assumes the video as already been uploaded.
There are several ways of adding captions to a video. These first 5 steps are common to them all.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio
- From the left-hand menu, select ‘Subtitles’
- Select the video that you want to add captions to
- Select ‘ADD LANGUAGE’ and select your language
- Hover over the row which was created for the new language and under ‘Subtitles’ column, select the pencil icon to ‘Add’
- On the pop up menu, choose how you would like to add captions: ‘upload file, auto-sync, or type them manually.
Choose ‘Upload file’ if you already have a file with the captions text, and possibly other information, defined.
Choose ‘Auto-sync’ if you want to paste in the captions text for the whole video from the clipboard and let YouTube work out how to display the words at the correct time.
Choose ‘Type manually’ if you want to type in the captions text yourself whilst watching the video.
Before you start, check your file type is supported on YouTube.
Follow steps 1-5 above.
- Select ‘Upload file’
- Choose between ‘With timing’ or ‘Without timing’, then select ‘Continue’
- Select a file to upload
- Select ‘Publish’
Follow steps 1-5 above.
- Select ‘Auto-sync’
- Enter the words in the video or copy and paste them from a document. Read YouTube’s tips for creating a transcript file
- Select ‘EDIT TIMINGS’ if you want to adjust the segmentation and timing of the captions
- Select ‘Publish’,
Please note: This option uses the same interface for entering text and timings as if you choose Auto-sync and then edit timings.
Follow ‘create captions’ steps 1-5.
- Select ‘Type manually’
- Play the video and enter your captions or subtitles. Don’t forget to add text like [applause] or [thunder] so viewers know what’s going on in the video. You can also pause click an option to pause video playback while typing.
- Select ‘Publish’.
Adjust captions
- In the bottom right-hand corner of the video player, select ‘Settings’
- Select ‘Subtitles/CC’
- Select ‘Options’.
You can customise:
- Font, colour, opacity, and size
- Background colour and opacity
- Window colour and opacity
- Character edge style.
- Select your profile picture
- Select ‘Settings’
- Select ‘Captions’
- Select ‘Caption size and style’ to change the default size and font.
- Open your device’s Settings app
- Select ‘Accessibility’
- In the ‘Hearing’ section, select ‘Subtitles & captioning’
- Select ‘Style’ to change the size and style for the display and font
- Select ‘Create New Style’ for more font styles, sizes, and colours.