What's up with YT subtitles?

[SiliconWizard]

Anyone else noticed YT has recently made subtitles on by default? Which I find utterly annoying.

You can disable that in the YT options, but it gets reenabled anyway on a regular basis.

And, you can disable that  (for a while...) only if you are connected to a YT/Google account. So if you wanna access YT without an account - which I routinely do on mobile devices - you're stuck.

Thoughts?

[ataradov]

I don't see that on a logged in or logged out session. Even on a browser that was never logged in into any google service.

I often see strange bugs like this on YT, and it always solves itself by either cleaning the cookies or waiting for a couple days. I think they occasionally roll out new versions of things and it takes time for all the servers to get it, so stuff subtly and randomly breaks for a couple days.

[golden_labels]

Alphabet very often⁽¹⁾ deploys experimental code as a part of A/B teting. If you see something new and it seems broken or irritating, you may be a subject in such a research and most people you know are not experiencing the same situation. You may usually bail out using what ataradov suggested above: removing cookies and hard-refreshing⁽²⁾ the webapp. That will make you appear as a fresh item on a next request, hopefully not being selected for the test. Works most of the time, though it seems sometimes tests are deployed less randomly and affect you due to your location. Doing that will also appear in the results of A/B testing as a negative reaction.

⁽¹⁾ That is: much more often than I have seen or had reported for any other company.
⁽²⁾ For example Ctrl+F5 in Firefox.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Anyone else noticed YT has recently made subtitles on by default? Which I find utterly annoying.

You can disable that in the YT options, but it gets reenabled anyway on a regular basis.

And, you can disable that  (for a while...) only if you are connected to a YT/Google account. So if you wanna access YT without an account - which I routinely do on mobile devices - you're stuck.

Thoughts?

As much fun as it is to throw shade at YouTube, I have had a issue where the auto-play gets switched back on. I found someone reported that it had something to do with their dark mode plug in. Sure enough, they were right.

And no, I don't know why either. But disabling it fixes it.

[SiliconWizard]

OK then, I just hope they revert whatever change they made then.

A quick search shows tens of links, people noticing the same, at various points in time, so I guess this isn't the first time it happens.
And yes, it may be some change that has been pushed locally. I don't think it has a link with cookies or whatever, as it does happen on all my machines, with different OSs, some with a Google account, some without, different viewing habits and stuff, different browser.

What I find irritating is not per se that it became default here - if it can be changed back. What I find more questionable is that it can't (and same with other settings) be changed without an account. I seem to remember a time when you could change YT settings without an account (since it stores cookies anyway)? This can't be done anymore.

[rdl]

I've seen the subtitles being turned on for many months, but not always. Sometimes on, sometimes off. I've just gotten in the habit of checking then turning them off at the same time I turn off auto-play. I never log in and cookies are disabled.

[tycz]

I've seen the subtitles being turned on for many months, but not always. Sometimes on, sometimes off. I've just gotten in the habit of checking then turning them off at the same time I turn off auto-play. I never log in and cookies are disabled.

Exactly the same for me. I've notice that the subtitles are sometimes in a different language to the video for no apparent reason.

[brucehoult]

I've seen the subtitles being turned on for many months, but not always. Sometimes on, sometimes off. I've just gotten in the habit of checking then turning them off at the same time I turn off auto-play. I never log in and cookies are disabled.

Exactly the same for me. I've notice that the subtitles are sometimes in a different language to the video for no apparent reason.

That's usually the point of subtitles :-)

Youtube subtitles are quite flexible. There can be multiple languages of subtitles. If the language you want is not there you can get youtube to translate from one of the languages it does have, on the fly. If there are no subtitles at all, you can get it to do speech recognition on the fly, and then translate *that* -- I've done this to watch a Ukrainian TV show (Servant of the People, pretty interesting) which in early series has English subtitles, then later on Russian subtitles, then on some episodes none at all.

And if you don't want them (as I usually don't), turning them off is only a mouse click. I haven't noticed them turning themselves on but .. idk ... maybe it happened and I just thought I mouse-slipped. Or I really did mouse slip.

[golden_labels]

That’s not a solution.

While I did not experience the problem myself, as I haven’t even seen the official YouTube webapp for quite some time, I can get how that can be irritating. Subtitles may be helpful for most people, so turning them on by default is not unreasonable. But then you have people, who know English well enough to not need subtitles. To them it may be distracting. Telling people that “there is no problem, because they can simply click and turn them off” is not really the solution. Clicking over and over again to turn off feature you’re not using quickly becomes a burden. That was the same to me when I had to manually switch every single video to 720p.

[SiliconWizard]

Not allowing persistent settings when not connected to an account IS questionable. As I said, I'm pretty sure you could do that before.

As to enabling subtitles by default, it is also questionable. The language for a given video can even seem kind of random as tycz said. I dunno if this change is made for the reason of being more "inclusive" (for deaf people for instance), which would go with all the woke stuff that most of those platforms promote. Don't get me wrong I'm all for making this available for them, but why by default?
Or if it is to maximize the number of viewers (which could also be a good reason for them) - to get viewers that don't understand the original language in a given video - except that translations are rarely available, or in languages you don't care about.

I don't see how it could be helpful for "most people" as golden_labels said. For some, maybe, in some cases. Why push it to everyone?

But as I said, the most irritating is that it can't be made a persistent setting anymore. Not if you are not connected to an account. And even if you are, it just keeps getting re-enabled for no apparent reason. It looks like the kind of thing Microsoft also does with Windows, so that's probably the new normal: constantly getting pushed with stuff you don't want, even when you said no.

As to it being easy to disable - it is on some platforms and not so much on others. For instance, on Firefox on a desktop OS, there is a subtitle icon that you get when you hover your mouse over the video, so it's just a click. But on mobile devices on which I use Opera, the player doesn't allow that. All you get is an icon for video settings, so you need to touch the video to get the settings icon, then touch the icon, which pops up a settings dialog, then there is a combo box list that you need to go through with all subtitles languages and get to "disabled", which is all the way up. Horrible.

The YT player has just kept getting worse anyway, and it's even worse on mobile platforms IMO.

[golden_labels]

I don't see how it could be helpful for "most people" as golden_labels said. For some, maybe, in some cases. Why push it to everyone?

Majority of people don’t know English well enough to easily understand it from hearing alone. Watching in noisy environments (public transport etc.) makes it hard even for the minority, who are native speakers.

[DiTBho]

If I ever open my channel on Youtube, It seems I cannot correctly pronounce the word "sapphire"

Out of five attempts with a poor quality microphone, Google translator understood the following:

Code: [Select]

the five
the fire
the fly
sapphire
top 5

Only a manual-subtitle can save me 

[golden_labels]

That’s because you people on that island beyond the Channel can’t speak American English! Here is a proof:

[brucehoult]

I'm not sure what the problem is supposed to be here? If they just listened to them they'd have it down faster than a whippet gets a hard-on. They need have a shifty out the window and also check the burgundy (or brown) doo-da on the dash that looks like an oreo. The words are plain.

(I assume they mean the undercarriage selector lever. That's sometimes a yellow-brown, but it's also often white.)

[rdl]

I've noticed some channels seem to never have sub-titles on and some always have them on. It could be something to do with the bookmarks, or maybe youtube is trying to guess based on general locations. I go to Scott Manley's videos and subs are turned off by default. I go to Marcus House channel and subs are always turned on.

[brucehoult]

I've noticed some channels seem to never have sub-titles on and some always have them on. It could be something to do with the bookmarks, or maybe youtube is trying to guess based on general locations. I go to Scott Manley's videos and subs are turned off by default. I go to Marcus House channel and subs are always turned on.

I just went to both of those (not for the first time!) and no subtitles to be seen.

I basically never have unwanted subtitles.

[SiliconWizard]

Still the same. Note that, as I said, it mostly happens if you're using YT without being connected to a YT account. Otherwise, it either doesn't happen, or happens very infrequently. If you're not connected, it's systematic.

I guess watching YT videos without being connected is very bad, right? Boooh. You're not supposed to do that. How dare you? So that's a light punishment for doing that. Right.

Some news though: now, on top of subtitles enabled by default, we get autoplay enabled by default on all videos. Same, when you're not connected.

Just a rant. Nobody forces me to watch YT videos.

[TechTaco]

Anyone else noticed YT has recently made subtitles on by default? Which I find utterly annoying.

Yes, I've noticed this happening seemingly randomly on videos over the past few months. I assumed it was the video's creator that could select if they play by default but perhaps I'm mistaken?

Never had the issue where they appear but in a different language other than my default region.