This Apple TV feature revolutionized how I watch movies and shows

You’re watching a movie or TV show, a character says something and you don’t hear a word of it. Maybe it just sounds like a mumbled mess or the background sound is too loud. You rewind, watch again and you still can’t figure it out. In the end, you either give up or turn on the subtitles. This is a common problem plaguing modern media.

Luckily, Apple TV offers some great help with its automatic captions feature. This greatly improves my experience watching movies and shows on the streaming service.

What are automatic subtitles?

While you can still manually turn on captions on Apple TV, automatic captions are designed to appear temporarily when you’re most likely to benefit from them. This includes two settings: “Show on Mute” and “Show on Skip Back”.

Show When Muted automatically turns on subtitles when your volume is muted or very low. This can be useful in various scenarios, such as if you need to briefly hear something in the room while watching TV.

Show when skipping back temporarily turns on subtitles when you rewind up to 30 seconds. This is the parameter that seems most useful to me; I have taken advantage of it countless times. Rather than fumbling with the remote to rewind, turn the subtitles on, and then turn them off again, this feature handles it all in one action. You rewind, it shows the subtitles of what you’re watching again, and then it turns the subtitles off.

Of course, it would be much better if the dialogue was clear from the start, but this is a long-standing problem that doesn’t seem to be improving. Muddy dialogue can occur for many reasons, such as the movie or show having a poor audio mix (or a mix designed for professional sound systems rather than a TV), poor quality television speakers, or the actor literally mumbling their words. There are steps you can take to hear sound more clearly, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

How to enable automatic subtitles

You can enable automatic captions on any device you use to watch Apple TV. In my testing, adjusting it on one device does not automatically reflect elsewhere. As such, you will likely need to follow these instructions for each device you want to enable automatic captions on.

On your internet browser:

1. Go to the Apple TV website.

2. At the top right, click your profile icon and select “Settings”.

3. Scroll down to the “Web Settings” section.

4. In “Automatic Captions,” enable “Show on Mute” and “Show on Rewind.”

On your mobile or tablet:

1. Open the Apple TV app.

2. At the top right, tap your profile icon.

3. Scroll down to the “Automatic Subtitles” section.

4. Enable “Show on Mute” and “Show on Rewind”.

On your TV:

1. Open the Apple TV app.

2. From the home page, tap left to open the menu.

3. Select “Settings”.

4. In the “General” section, select “Automatic Subtitles”.

5. Enable “Show on rewind” and “Show on mute”. The latter may not be present; It is not supported when your TV volume is controlled by an infrared remote control.

Also try using Apple TV audio enhancements

Apple acknowledges that dialogue can sometimes be difficult to hear; This is one of the main reasons why the subtitle skip setting exists. Apple TV also goes further with a feature called “Enhance Dialogue,” which makes dialogue more visible.

Unfortunately, Enhance Dialogue is not available on all devices. You should see it on the Apple TV Smart TV app or when using a physical Apple TV media player (which works on tvOS), for example, but you won’t see it on the web.

You can turn the feature on/off while watching something on Apple TV. On the playback controls, select the icon that looks like a sound wave surrounded by a circle. The exact options you see will depend on your device. You may only see “Enhance” or “Enhance Dialogue”, which gives the standard enhancement with minimal impact on the audio mix. You can also see “Enhance More”, which makes the dialogue even more prominent, but at the cost of changing the audio mix more significantly.

Credit: Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek

Play around with these options and see what works for you. This will depend on your personal taste and your specific audio setup. In fact, you may prefer not to use Enhance Dialogue entirely.

I think every service should have automatic captions. Ever since I started using it on Apple TV, I’ve been craving it on other streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video. Especially as more and more people use subtitles when watching movies and shows, it seems obvious: it’s one of the reasons Apple TV is so good.

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Apple TV is the only place you can watch Apple Original movies and shows, such as Severance, Ted Lasso, and Silo.