This page has two halves. The first is for viewers who want captions off (or on) and want the setting to stay put. The second is for creators who want to know what YouTube's automatic captions do to their videos and how to replace them with something better. We checked every menu path below against YouTube Help in October 2026. YouTube moves things around between app versions, so if a label on your screen is slightly different, look for the closest match.
How to turn off captions on YouTube
On a computer, open the video and click the Closed captions (CC) button at the bottom right of the player. Click it again to turn captions back on. If there's no CC button, that video has no captions at all, automatic or otherwise.
That click only affects what you're watching. To change the default, click your profile picture, then Settings, then Playback and performance in the left menu. Two checkboxes matter there:
- Always show captions turns captions on for every video that has them. Uncheck it to stop that.
- Include auto-generated captions (when available) decides whether that rule also applies to videos that only have YouTube's automatic track.
The second box is useful if you rely on captions but find the machine-made ones distracting. Leave "Always show captions" on, uncheck the auto-generated box, and you'll only get captions the creator actually wrote or uploaded.
Turn off auto captions: YouTube app on phones and tablets
On Android, iPhone and iPad the per-video switch works the same way: tap the video once to show the controls, then tap Closed captions. Tap it again to turn them off. The default setting lives in a different place on each system.
| Where | Turn captions off for one video | Change the default |
|---|---|---|
| Android app | Tap the player, then Closed captions | Profile picture, Settings, Captions, then turn off Show captions |
| iPhone and iPad app | Tap the player, then Closed captions | The iOS Settings app, Accessibility, Subtitles & Captioning, then turn off Closed Captions + SDH |
| TV, game console, streaming stick | Pause the video, then select Captions | YouTube Help only describes the per-video menu for TVs |
| Computer | Click CC on the player | Settings, Playback and performance, Always show captions |
The iPhone row surprises people. The YouTube app follows Apple's system-wide caption setting, so if Closed Captions + SDH is on in iOS, captions come back on the next video even after you tap CC off. The phone and TV steps come from YouTube's Manage caption settings page and its page on captions on TV and game consoles. The desktop checkboxes are described in RNID's YouTube captions guide.
Why YouTube keeps turning captions back on
You turn captions off, and the next video has them again. It's a common complaint, and the fix is usually a setting you forgot about. Check these in order:
- A default is on. Check Always show captions on desktop, Show captions in the Android app, or Closed Captions + SDH in iOS.
- Show when muted is on. This phone and tablet setting shows captions whenever a video plays without sound. If captions only appear on silent videos, this is almost certainly it. To change it, tap the player, then Settings, then Captions, and switch off Show when muted.
- You're on a different account or device. The desktop setting is saved to your account, the iOS one to your phone. A TV, a shared laptop or a signed-out browser has its own settings.
If none of those fixes it on one specific video, the creator may have burned the text into the picture. Those are open captions, part of the video itself, and no setting can hide them.
Change caption size and style
On desktop, click Settings (the gear) on the player, then Subtitles/CC, then Options. You can change the font, color, size and opacity, the background and window behind the text, and the edge style. These become your defaults until you change them or click Reset. In the Android app it's profile picture, Settings, Captions, Caption size and style. On iPhone it's back in the iOS settings: Accessibility, Subtitles & Captioning, Style. On a TV, pause the video, choose Captions, then Caption style.
How YouTube automatic captions work
When you upload a video, YouTube runs its speech recognition over the audio and, if it can, publishes a caption track automatically. You don't have to turn anything on. According to YouTube's Use automatic captioning page, a few details are worth knowing:
- YouTube lists 67 languages for regular videos and Shorts, including English, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and Portuguese. If yours isn't on the list, no automatic track appears.
- There's no fixed wait. Processing depends on how complex the audio is, so captions may not exist right after upload.
- If a video has several audio tracks, the automatic captions follow the default language only.
- English captions can be "expressive": shouting in all caps, plus sounds like sighs and gasps written out.
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By default YouTube replaces words it thinks are inappropriate with
[ __ ]. You can turn that off in YouTube Studio under Settings, Channel, Advanced settings. - Live streams get automatic captions in English only, and the live captions are replaced by new ones after the stream ends.
YouTube itself says the quality varies and asks creators to add their own captions first. In our experience the words are usually close, and the mistakes land on names, product terms and numbers, which is exactly what a viewer notices.
Edit or remove the automatic track in YouTube Studio
Here's the path YouTube documents on its Edit or remove captions page:
- Sign in to YouTube Studio and pick Subtitles in the left menu.
- Click the video.
- Select Edit next to the language, then Duplicate and edit. YouTube saves your fixes as a new caption track.
- Click any line to fix the text. If you don't see timestamps, select Edit timings to adjust them.
- Click Publish.
To take captions off a video entirely, open the Options menu in the Subtitles column for that language and delete the track. Studio asks you to confirm first.
Upload your own captions instead
Editing in Studio is fine for a few typos. For a whole video it's slow, because you're working in a browser panel line by line. We think uploading a caption file you've already checked is the better habit. You control every word, including the names YouTube will mishear. Your track shows up under the language name without the "auto-generated" tag. And you keep the file, so the same captions can go on Vimeo, LinkedIn or a course platform.
The quickest way to get that file is to run your original video through an SRT generator, read it through, and download it. If the format is new to you, what an SRT file is explains it in a few minutes. Then, as YouTube's Add subtitles & captions page describes:
- In YouTube Studio, choose Subtitles and click the video.
- If the spoken language isn't listed yet, click Add language and pick it.
- Under Subtitles, click Add, then Upload file.
- Choose With timing (an SRT has timestamps), click Continue, select the file and click Save.
If you'd rather have captions that show on every platform whether the viewer turns them on or not, burn them into the video with our auto caption generator and upload that version. That suits Shorts. For long YouTube videos we'd stick with a caption file, since viewers there expect to be able to switch captions off.