YouTube error · Common
YouTube captions not showing — fix subtitle button + auto-translate
You click the CC button but no captions appear, or the captions toggle is grayed out, or the language list is empty. Different from "captions disabled by uploader" (which shows an explicit message) — this is the toggle silently not working.
Why this happens
- Browser extension intercepting the captions API call.
- Browser language preference doesn't match any caption track on the video.
- Caption track exists but is auto-generated only (ASR) — some videos hide these by default.
- YouTube's caption rendering broke for this player session — happens after long idle periods.
- Local font rendering issue (rare — captions render as empty boxes).
How to fix it
- 1
Click the gear icon → Subtitles/CC → pick a language
The CC button toggles the default track. If no default is set or the default is in your wrong language, the toggle does nothing visible. Manually pick a language from the gear menu.
- 2
Enable auto-generated captions explicitly
Gear → Subtitles → look for "(auto-generated)" entries. These are hidden by default in some account settings. Toggle "Auto-generated captions" in YouTube account settings → Playback → Always show captions.
- 3
Hard reload the page
Cmd+Shift+R or Ctrl+F5. Captions state gets stuck on long idle sessions — fresh load resets the renderer.
- 4
Disable extensions in incognito
Translation extensions, dictionary lookups, and some accessibility tools hook the captions DOM. Test in incognito to confirm.
- 5
Download the subtitles as SRT/VTT
When the player fails to render captions but you specifically need them, download the subtitle file directly — it works regardless of what the player is doing.
If you just want the video saved
VidPickr's subtitle downloader exports the captions as SRT, VTT, or plain TXT in any caption language YouTube has for the video — including auto-generated and auto-translated. Useful when the in-player captions are stuck.
Try VidPickr