Turn on & manage community contributions
Your community of viewers can help you reach a larger audience by adding title, description, subtitles, and closed captions to your videos. Once you have same language captions for a video, your community can submit translations to help you reach a global audience.
When content is submitted, you can manage it by reviewing, editing, publishing, flagging, or rejecting it. Your community can also review the content, and it'll automatically be published when it gets enough reviews.
Turn community contributions for videos on or off
Before your community can submit titles, descriptions, closed captions, or subtitles, you need to turn it on for selected videos or make it the default setting for all videos on your channel. Learn how fans contribute and review this content for your videos.
Follow these steps to turn community contributions on for all videos. Note that this change will reset any settings applied to individual videos.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio beta.
- From the left menu, select Transcriptions.
- From the top, select Community.
- Select Turn on.
Creator Studio Classic instructions
Turn community contributions on or off with one click by going directly to your account or follow the steps below.
Note: Following these steps to turn community contributions on or off will apply the setting to all videos — any setting applied to individual videos will be reset. You can still turn it off for individual videos.
- Click your account in the top right > Creator Studio.
- On the left, click Translations & Transcriptions > Community Contributions.
- Click Turn on for all videos. If you don't see that option, click settings
in the top right, then click Turn on for all videos. You may need to choose a default language for your channel first.
To turn this feature off for all videos, just click settings > Turn off for all videos.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio beta.
- From the left menu, select Videos.
- Click the title or thumbnail of the video you'd like to edit.
- From the left menu, select Transcriptions.
- If you haven’t, set the language for your video.
- Select the Community Contributions box and choose between On for this video and Off for this video.
Creator Studio Classic instructions
Go to your Video Manager. Get there by clicking your account in the top right > Creator Studio > Video Manager > Videos.
- Next to the video that you want to allow fan contributions to, click Edit > Info & Settings.
- Under the video, select the Advanced settings tab.
- Under "Community contributions," select Allow viewers to contribute to this video.
- Click Save changes.
To turn this feature off, just uncheck the box next to Allow viewers to contribute translated titles, descriptions and subtitles/CC for the video you want don't want to allow fans to contribute to.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio beta.
- From the left menu, select Videos.
- Check the boxes next to the videos you'd like to edit.
- Select Edit, then Community contributions.
- Choose whether you’d like them to be On or Off, then select Update videos.
Creator Studio Classic instructions
Go to your Video Manager. Get there by clicking your account in the top right > Creator Studio > Video Manager > Videos.
- Select all the videos that you want to be eligible for community contributions.
- At the top of the page, click Actions > More actions > Community contributions.
- Select Allow viewers to contribute translated titles, descriptions and subtitles/CC.
Manage community contributions
Once transcriptions or translations are submitted, the content goes through a review process. YouTube moderates these submissions for spam and inappropriate content, while getting input from you and your community.
When enough people contribute titles, descriptions, captions, or subtitles for a video, your community is prompted to help review the content (instead of adding to it). When that submission gets enough reviews, it's automatically approved for the video. This saves you time and lets your community experts help in their language.
Be sure to review, edit, flag, or reject content. You can also publish or delete content that's been approved.
- In the top right corner, click on your account, then Creator Studio.
- In the left-hand panel, click Translations & Transcriptions > Community Contributions.
- You can take the following actions: Manage contributions in progress
Remove or edit published content
To see submissions in progress, go to the In review tab and select Review next to the item you want to manage.
- Approved and publish submissions: At the top of the page, select Publish.
- Edit submission: Make any corrections in the box below the submission. Select Exit to save to drafts or Publish to approve.
- Report spam or abuse: Select Report.
- Ask the community to make improvements: At the bottom of the page, select Needs more work.
Go to the Published tab and select View next to the track you want to manage.
- Edit submissions: Select Edit. Make your edits and select Publish edits.
- Delete submissions for subtitles/CC: Select Actions > Delete.
- Delete submissions for title and description: Go to Video Manager > Info & settings > Translations and select the delete icon next to the language in question.
Give credit to contributors
When you allow community contributions on your channel or video(s), we automatically publish the top contributors in the video's description. Contributors can only be listed if they have a channel on YouTube and if they agreed to be listed publicly (they can opt out).
- The main 5 contributors per language are shown, ranked by their contribution to the published version.
- The contributor list shows in translated versions of the video description (if applicable).
You can also see the list of contributors under the Subtitles & CC tab next to the version they contributed to.
Note that currently only contributors to subtitles/CCs can be credited in this way.