Watch Videos with Captions

Search for videos with captions

Videos with captions available will have a “CC” icon underneath the video summary in search results. If you’d like search results to only show videos with captions available, enable this search filter:

  1. Enter your keywords in the YouTube search bar
  2. Click the Filters btn
  3. Click CC (closed caption)

Change caption font and format

YouTube has multiple settings to customize the font, color, and size of captions to suit your needs. To get started, first make sure you have captions turned on, then follow these steps:

  1. Click the settings icon
  2. Click Options to customize:
    • Font, color, opacity, and size
    • Background color and opacity
    • Window color and opacity
    • Character edge style
  3. Click Done

Note: these will be your default captions format settings until you change them again or click Reset to go back to the default captions format.

Caption shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts allow you to quickly adjust caption formatting while watching your video. Click anywhere in the video player before using keyboard shortcuts in order for them to work.

  • “b” will toggle the background shading on or off
  • “+” makes the captions bigger
  • “-” makes the captions smaller

Customize captions on YouTube for Android

Customize how captions are displayed in the YouTube app for Android by going to your Android settings (Android 4.4 devices and above) or your YouTube app settings (Android 4.3 devices and below):

  • Android settings: Go to Accessibility > Captions.
  • YouTube settings: Go to General > Captions.

 Turn captions on and off

Captions are only available on videos where the owner has added them, and on certain videos where YouTubeautomatically provides them.

If a video has captions, you can turn them on by clicking the captions icon at the bottom of the video. Depending on your location, the captions icon will look like one of the following: or

To turn them off, click the captions icon, then Turn Captions Off.

Select caption language

Choose different caption languages by clicking the captions icon. If the language you’d like isn’t there, you may want to try auto-translated captions, which uses Google Translate to translate the captions.

Here’s how to enable auto-translated captions:

  1. Click on the captions icon at the bottom of the video
  2. Click Options
  3. Click Translate Captions
  4. Click to select a language
  5. Click OK

Change default settings for captions

Here’s how to always show or hide captions by default if they’re available:

  1. Go to your Account Settings page
  2. Select Playback from the left-hand menu
  3. Check or uncheck Always show captions
    (Check Show automatic captions by speech recognition (when available) to enable automatic captions for videos that don’t already have captions provided)
  4. Click Save

View captions transcript

For videos with captions provided by the owner, you have the option to view the full captions transcript, and jump to specific parts of the video.

Here’s how to open this interactive transcript option:

  1. Click More underneath the player.
  2. Select the transcript icon . As you watch the video, the transcript will scroll to show you the current caption text.
  3. Click on any line of caption text to jump to that part of the video.

Contribute subtitles and closed captions

Some channels let you contribute subtitles and closed captions to their videos. You can submit content for an entire video or just add what you know — every little bit helps make videos more accessible to a larger audience.

If the video’s creator accepts your submission, they’ll be viewable on the video by clicking on the [CC] icon in the player. Approved content is owned by the video owner, but your YouTube username and public profile may be visible to the video uploader and other video viewers.

Before you start: Make sure the video you want to add captions or subtitles to is part of a participating channel.

List of participating channels

Add closed captions or subtitles

  1. Go to the video that you want to contribute subtitles or closed captions to. Click on one of the following places on the page:
    • Video has subtitles or closed captions: Select  More > Transcript or the CC menu in the player. Click the language dropdown and select Add subtitles/CC.
    • Video doesn’t have subtitles or closed captions: Select  More > Transcript, then select Add subtitles/CC.

    You may have received a link from the creator that will bring you right to the subtitle and closed caption contribution page. It would look something like this: https://www.youtube.com/timedtext_video?v=LCZ-cxfxzvk.

  2. Click Add subtitles or CC and then select the language that you’d like to contribute. You can use the search bar to find languages that don’t automatically show in the list. You’ll only see options for other languages if subtitles or closed captions have already been submitted for the video’s original language.
    On the right side of the selected language, you might see showing how many other people are currently working on the same subtitles or captions. If there are a lot of people working on this video, consider working on a different video or coming back later.
  3. Follow the steps to add closed captions or subtitles. If approved, the content that you add here will overwrite any other same-language subtitles you’ve already contributed for the video.
Add closed captions (same language as the video)
  1. Play the video. When you get to the part where you want to add a caption, pause the video.
  2. Type your caption into the box that says “Type subtitle here and press Enter.” Don’t forget to add text describing other sounds happening in the video. For example, you can add sounds like applause or thunder as[applause] or [thunder] so viewers know what’s going on in the video.
    • Tip: You can also “play as you type” — just start typing and video playback will automatically pause.
  3. When you’re done, click the blue add btn and you’ll see your content show up in the transcript and in the timeline below the video.
  4. If you need to, adjust when the caption starts and ends by dragging the borders around the text under the video.
  5. Repeat this process for all the spoken words in the video.
  6. When you’re done, select Submit.

To speed up your work, you can also use the following keyboard shortcuts:

  • Enter: Add the subtitle.
  • Shift + space: Pause or play the video.
  • Shift + left arrow: Seek back 5 seconds.
Add subtitles

When you’re adding subtitles, the timing has already been set in the original closed caption track, so all you need to do is translate each line.

  1. Play the video. When you get to the part where you want to add a subtitle, pause the video.
  2. Type your subtitle into the box that says “Type subtitle here and press Enter.”  You can also click Auto translate in the “Actions” menu to fill each line with a suggested translation from Google Translate. If you do this, make sure to review and fix each line carefully.
    • Tip: You can also “play as you type” — just start typing and video playback will automatically pause.
  3. When you’re done, click the blue add btn and you’ll see your content show up in the transcript and in the timeline below the video.
  4. Repeat this process for each line in the video.
  5. When you’re done, select Submit.

Note: You can’t adjust the timing of the subtitles since it’s automatically set based on the original closed caption timing.

After you submit your content, you’ll be asked if the subtitles or captions for the video are complete or if there’s still more to be done. This helps us figure out if other contributors need to pick up where you left off.

Subtitle & closed caption review process

Once you submit your contribution, it may be combined with other submissions until that language is ready for review. Other community members will see your contribution and be able to extend or improve upon it. They won’t see your name or profile information.

Once it’s ready, your contribution is sent to YouTube for review. We moderate for spam and inappropriate contributions. If your contribution meets quality guidelines, we let the video owner know that it’s waiting for review. They can accept or reject your contribution or flag it as spam. You’ll get a weekly email letting you know if any of your submissions have been approved.

Manage your contributions

You can see your contributions in your contribution queue, including each one’s status.

  1. In the top right corner, click on your account.
  2. Select Creator Studio.
  3. In the left-hand panel, select Community.
  4. Select Contribute subtitles and CC.

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Note: The accepted formula that Auxiliary Mode Inc. uses to calculate the CPM range is $0.45 USD - $25.00 USD.

The range fluctuates this much because many factors come into play when calculating a CPM. Quality of traffic, source country, niche type of video, price of specific ads, adblock, the actual click rate, watch time and etc.

Cost per thousand (CPM) is a marketing term used to denote the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on one webpage. If a website publisher charges $2.00CPM, that means an advertiser must pay $2.00 for every 1,000 impressions of its ad. The "M" in CPM represents the Roman numeral for 1,000.

$0.00 - $0.00

Estimated daily earnings

$0.00 - $0.00

Estimated monthly earnings

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Estimated yearly projection

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