How To Turn Off Closed Caption on Roku

When watching a movie or TV Show and are having some difficulties either with the language being spoken or the accent, then subtitles come in handy ensuring that you don’t miss anything.

Closed Captions (CC) is a crucial feature playing this role when watching a video. They are useful if one is deaf, the volume can’t be turned up, or the dialogue is quite difficult to comprehend. This can be due to the background noises or the sound effects in the video. However, what happens when the video you are watching meets all the sound requirements including the language being used. It becomes a bit distracting as you keep getting yourself reading the closed captions instead of actually watching. Roku has closed captions too and it seems simple to turn on when not needed and hard to turn off when needed.

To turn off closed captions on Roku, you can either go to the Roku Settings page or simply toggle off Closed Captions when streaming a video. Let’s walk you through the process of turning it off.

There are two ways that you can use to turn off Closed Captions on Roku with the simplest one being on the streaming video itself.

Turning off Closed Caption while streaming

Stream the video on Roku that you want to turn off closed captions and then press the asterisk (*) button on the Roku remote. You will see a caption/audio configuration pop-up menu. Click on the caption mode and in the menu, there are three options to choose from – On, off, or only during a replay. Turn off Closed Captions for the video by selecting ‘Off’. You should note that this method turns off CC for a specific video and not all of them.

Turning off Closed Caption from Settings

If you wish to turn off Closed Captions for all your videos from one place, then you can use the Roku Settings menu. To go to the Settings menu, press the Home button on the remote and from the menu, scroll down and select Settings. Using the arrow button, scroll and select ‘Accessibility’. Under Accessibility, select ‘Caption mode’ and then select ‘Off’ to turn off CC on Roku. You can also select ‘on replay’ to only allow the feature to come on when you replay a video. On some Roku devices, you also get a ‘When mute’ option that allows you to have the closed captions when the volume is muted. If your Roku device is an older version, then you might not see ‘Accessibility’, instead, you might see ‘Captions’ in the Settings’ menu. For some service providers however, closed captions are only activated from within the channel.

Customizing closed captions

There are some style elements that you can customize on Roku for channels using closed captions settings. You can customize the background, text, and window. Go to the Settings menu by pressing the Home button on your remote. Scroll and select Settings. Using the arrow buttons, select ‘Accessibility’ and click on ‘Caption Style’ to open the style menu. If your Roku model doesn’t have ‘Accessibility’, then select ‘Captions’. You can now adjust the text, window, and background based on your preferences. This helps make the captions clearer for you.

How To Turn Off Closed Caption on Roku: A snap shot

Final Thoughts

Closed captions are beneficial in many ways ensuring that you keep up with the video when watching. However, it can be distracting. The above methods are the ways that you can use to turn off closed captions if you don’t want them. Using the same way, you can go ahead and turn them on. Note that not all streaming services on Roku allow you to turn off CC from the Roku Settings page. If you don’t want to turn the CC completely, then you can set the Caption mode to ‘On reply’.

FAQs

How am I turning off Closed Captions and it’s still showing?

Closed Captions depends on the streaming service despite it being turned off in the Roku Settings. Check with the specific streaming service still displaying the closed captions and turn it off from the service.

Is Subtitle the same as a closed caption?

No, closed captions and subtitles are different. Closed captions are the direct words being spoken on the video while subtitles are translated spoken words to another language.