How to Add Subtitles to Your YouTube Videos (Step by Step)

Good subtitles make your videos accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, help people watching with the sound off, and make your channel easier to discover. YouTube gives creators several ways to add them in YouTube Studio. This guide walks through each option and helps you pick the fastest one for your video.

Before you start: check the automatic captions

YouTube creates automatic captions for many videos in supported languages shortly after upload. They are a useful starting point but often get names, technical terms and punctuation wrong. Editing them is usually quicker than starting from scratch. Read auto-generated vs. manual captions for how accurate they tend to be.

Open the Subtitles page in YouTube Studio

1. Go to YouTube Studio and choose Subtitles in the left menu.
2. Click the video you want to caption.
3. If asked, confirm the video’s language. YouTube needs this to create and sync captions.
4. Click Add language if you are adding a new language, or Add next to an existing one.

You will then see several options. Here is when to use each.

Option 1: Edit the automatic captions

Best when the automatic captions are mostly right. Next to the Automatic track, choose Duplicate and edit, fix mistakes in the text, and publish. The timing is already done for you, so this is often the quickest way to get accurate captions.

Option 2: Upload a subtitle file

Best when you already have captions from an editor or a captioning service. Choose Upload file, then:

• With timing for SRT, VTT or SBV files that include timecodes.
• Without timing for a plain text transcript; YouTube then works out the timing for you.

Save the file as UTF-8 so accented characters and emoji display correctly.

Option 3: Auto-sync a transcript

Best when you have an accurate script or transcript but no timecodes. Choose Auto-sync, paste the full text and YouTube matches each sentence to the moment it is spoken. Auto-sync works best when the text matches the audio closely, so edit out lines you cut from the final video.

Option 4: Type captions manually

Best for short videos or when nothing else is available. Choose Type manually, play the video and type what is said. YouTube’s editor can pause the video while you type. This is accurate but slow for anything longer than a few minutes.

A fast workflow for most creators

1. Wait for YouTube’s automatic captions to appear.
2. Paste your video link into our YouTube Video Transcript Generator, switch to Paragraphs with timestamps off, and copy the text.
3. Correct the text in a document, where spell-check and find-and-replace make fixing repeated mistakes easy.
4. Back in YouTube Studio, use Auto-sync with your corrected text.

Fixing text in a document is much faster than clicking through caption lines one by one, and auto-sync takes care of the timing.

Caption style tips

• Keep lines short, roughly 32–42 characters, and use no more than two lines on screen at once.
• Add sound cues that matter to the story, such as [laughs] or [music stops].
• Label speakers when it is unclear who is talking: ANNA: Let’s start.
• Keep the creator’s own words; do not rewrite them in the captions.

Add subtitles in other languages

Once your original captions are accurate, use Add language to add translations. You can upload translated SRT files or type translations into the existing timing. Accurate source captions lead to much better translations. See getting transcripts in other languages.

Why it is worth the effort

Captions make your videos usable for more people and give YouTube and search engines a clear text version of what you say. Read more in do transcripts help YouTube SEO.

Frequently Asked Questions