Use automatic captioning

Captions are a great way to make content accessible for viewers. YouTube can use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions for your videos.

Note: These automatic captions are generated by machine learning algorithms, so the quality of the captions may vary. We encourage creators to add professional captions first. YouTube is constantly improving its speech recognition technology. However, automatic captions might misrepresent the spoken content due to mispronunciations, accents, dialects or background noise. You should always review automatic captions and edit any parts that haven't been transcribed properly.

Automatic captions on long-form videos and Shorts

Automatic captions are available in Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. If there are multiple language audio tracks on a video, the automatic captions will be in the default language.

We encourage creators to add professional captions first. If automatic captions are available, they'll be published automatically on the video. Automatic captions may not be ready at the time that you upload a video. The processing time depends on the complexity of the video's audio.

YouTube is constantly improving its speech recognition technology. However, automatic captions might misrepresent the spoken content due to mispronunciations, accents, dialects or background noise. Always review automatic captions and edit any parts that haven't been properly transcribed.

Here's how you can review automatic captions and make changes, if needed:

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.
2. From the left menu, select Subtitles.
3. Click the video that you want to add captions or subtitles to.
4. Under 'Subtitles', click More  next to the subtitles that you want to edit.
5. Review the automatic captions and edit or remove any parts that haven't been properly transcribed.

Troubleshoot automatic caption issues

If your video doesn't generate automatic captions, it could be due to one or more of the following reasons:

• The captions aren't available yet due to processing complex audio in the video.
• The automatic captions don't support the language in the video.
• The video is too long.
• The video has poor sound quality or YouTube doesn't recognise the speech.
• There's a long period of silence at the beginning of the video.
• There are multiple speakers whose speech overlaps or multiple languages at the same time.

Automatic captions on live stream videos

Note: Automatic captions for live streams are available in English only. The automatic captions can only be turned on for individual live streams, not the entire channel.

Automatic captions for live streams are currently being rolled out to English channels. These channels are streaming at 'normal latency' with professional captions unavailable. We encourage creators to use professional captions first. Learn about live caption requirements.

After the live stream ends, live automatic captions won't remain on the video. New automatic captions will be generated based on the VOD process and may be different from the ones that appeared during the live stream.

Set up live automatic captions

Here's how you can turn on live automatic captions (English only):

1. Go to YouTube.
2. At the top right, click Create   Go live.
3. Choose Stream  from the left-hand menu.
4. Within stream settings, turn on Closed captions.
5. Choose 'Automatic captions' as the captions source.
6. Select your video language (English only).

Troubleshoot live automatic captions

If the live stream doesn't show automatic captions, it could be due to one or more of the following reasons:

• The feature hasn't been turned on for the channel, as we're slowly rolling out to channels with more than 1,000 subscribers.
• The channel is streaming in ultra-low or low latency (such as a mobile live stream). Live automatic captions are only available for normal latency streaming.
• The automatic captions don't support the language in the video.
• The video has poor sound quality or YouTube doesn't recognise the speech.
• There are multiple speakers whose speech overlaps or multiple languages at the same time.

Note: To prevent automatic captions from being shown on your live streams, get in touch with the Creator Support team.

Automatic captioning advanced settings

Potentially inappropriate words in automatic captions

The 'Don't show potentially inappropriate words' setting in YouTube Studio replaces potentially inappropriate words with an open bracket, two underscores and a closed bracket '[ __ ]' by default in automatic captions. This setting doesn't affect any audio tracks or manually edited captions. It's intended to help prevent potentially inappropriate words from mistakenly appearing in automatic captions. It also doesn't affect your video's monetisation status.

Automatic captioning applies to uploaded videos and live streams.

We still encourage creators to review all their automatically generated captions as we continue to improve our speech recognition software and reduce automatic captioning errors.

Here's how you can turn off the 'Don't show potentially inappropriate words' setting, if needed:

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.
2. From the left menu, select Settings .
3. Select Channel  Advanced settings.
4. Under the 'Auto-generated captions', deselect Don't show potentially inappropriate words.

Note: This setting is available for automatic captions and auto-translated subtitles.