How to Turn on and Customize Captions for Videos on Android
I love watching movies and other videos with the caption enabled because I always want to know everything everyone says. Yes, I'm the type to pay particular attention to details. Aside from personal preferences, there are other beneficial uses of the legend and we'll all talk about it in this post. In addition, you will also learn how to enable subtitles on your Android smartphone.
How does the legend work on Android?
Captions are the text that appears at the bottom of your mobile, TV, or computer screen when you watch movies, cartoons, or any type of video material in general. We also call them subtitles. This text displays the words spoken by the characters in a video.
On Android smartphones, the caption feature is optimized by Google and allows you to add text to videos you play on your device. The feature works primarily with streaming services and applications that are managed by Google (for example, YouTube), offline videos (saved on your device), and YouTube videos in mobile browsers.
Note: For offline videos, captions appear only when you play videos with your phone's default media player.
Benefits of enabling subtitles in videos
Subtitles play a vital role in helping people with hearing loss understand what is being said and done on video. It also helps some people without hearing difficulty to concentrate and better understand the contents of a video file.
In addition, since subtitles support multiple languages, it improves the reach and accessibility of video content.
Now that we have established the basics to enable subtitles on your device, let's see how to scroll them on your Android device.
Enable captions on Android
Enable legends at the system level on your Android smartphone is as simple as possible. Here's how to do it.
Step 1: Launch the Settings menu of your device.
2nd step: Scroll down to the bottom of the Settings menu and select Accessibility.
Step 3: Scroll to the bottom of the Accessibility page and under the "Audio & Text On Screen" section, tap Subtitles.
This will open the Subtitles page where you can activate subtitles and customize the subtitle of your device to your liking.
Step 4: On the Captions page, tap the Use caption option to turn it on.
If you follow these steps correctly, the subtitles must appear on all YouTube videos and any other supported content on your Android phone or tablet.
Customizing subtitles on Android
The caption feature on the Android OS is not just good; it's fine. As noted earlier, Google has designed this feature so that users can customize it as they see fit. Let's take a look at the options for customizing the subtitles available on your Android smartphone, what they do and how you can use them to your advantage.
Choose the language of the legend
Currently, the caption feature on Android devices supports 81 different languages (yes, I counted it). Google may later add support for multiple languages. For now, here's how to choose and change the language of the caption on your Android device.
Note: When you enable captions, the language is set to Default, which is the default language of your device.
Go to your device's Subtitles page (Settings> Accessibility> Subtitles).
Step 1: On the Legend page, tap the Language option.
2nd step: Select the language of your choice from the list.
Setting the size of the legend
It's also a pretty simple process.
Step 1: On the Captions page, tap the Text Size option.
2nd step: Select the size or size of the text in the captions of your videos.
As shown in the picture above, the available options are Very Small, Small, Normal, Large and Extra Large. You must adjust the size of the legend to your visual preference.
You can preview the appearance of different legend sizes in the provided window.
Choose the legend style
You can also customize how you want captions to appear on your videos. Here's how to customize the captions on your Android smartphone.
Step 1: On the Captions page, tap the Caption Style option.
2nd step: Choose your preferred caption style from the list of options.
- White on black – the captions will have a white text on a black background. This is also the default caption style.
- Black on white – the captions will have a black text on a white background.
- Yellow on black – the captions will have a yellow text on a black background.
- Yellow on blue – the captions will have a yellow text on a blue background.
By tapping the Customize option, you can adjust the style of your caption with different text colors, background colors, background color opacity, fonts, and more.
Preterite, but really great
Since Google has developed and enabled the legend feature, it works effectively with Google-owned applications and services, such as YouTube. I've also tried watching movies on the Netflix app on my phone, but no captions were displayed.
When I was playing offline videos with Files, the native Android file manager, the captions appeared perfectly in all the movies viewed. The best part is that the customizations I made to my captions appeared instantly.
The Android Legend feature is great but not perfect yet. Hopefully Google is developing the functionality to easily integrate third-party applications in the future.
Then: Do you still have trouble finding interesting movies and series on Netflix? Check out our detailed tutorial on finding top quality movies and TV shows on Netflix.