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 provide 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 properly transcribed.

Automatic captions on videos-on-demand

Automatic captions are available in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

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

YouTube is constantly improving its speech recognition technology. But 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 you want to add captions or subtitles to.
  4. Under “Subtitles”, click More  next to the subtitles you want to edit.
  5. Review automatic captions and edit or remove any parts that haven't been properly transcribed.

Troubleshoot automatic captions 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.
  • 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 recognize the speech.
  • There is a long period of silence at the beginning of the video.
  • There are multiple speakers whose speech overlaps.  

Automatic captions on livestream videos

Note: Automatic captions for livestreams are available in English only.

Automatic captions for livestreams are currently being rolled out to English channels. These channels have over 1,000 subscribers and 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 stay and automatic captions will be generated based on the VOD process. 

Learn how viewers get captions on your live stream.

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.
  • 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.
  • Automatic captions don't support the language in the video.
  • The video has poor sound quality or YouTube doesn't recognize 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.
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