How to Fix It When Roku Closed Captioning Won't Turn Off (2024)

Streaming > Streaming Devices

If closed captioning on a Roku appear unexpectedly, or appear even if you think you’ve turned off the feature, we’ll cover ways to make sure your Roku viewing is caption-free.

How to Fix It When Roku Closed Captioning Won't Turn Off

You can turn off closed captions on your Roku device for good with a couple of simple steps. Start by checking the system-wide settings, or alternately in the channel's settings. Finally, if these seem to be set correctly, you can always reset your device.

1. Check the system-wide settings. From the Roku Home screen, navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Captions mode and ensure it’s set to Off. You can also access this setting by * Button on your remote to access the Options menu, or press the Voice button (the one with a microphone) on your remote and use a voice command such as “Turn off closed captions.”

2. Check the channel’s settings. From the channel’s home screen, look to see if it has a settings screen of its own. For example, the below screenshot from the HBO Max channel’s Closed Captions tab, available from your profile. Options for closed captions are often located within settings for accessibility, audio, or together with subtitles.

   The exact location of caption settings and combination of steps to reach them will be different across channels. However, the general concept of where to find them and how to use them is similar.

3. Check the settings on your current content. When you bring up the channel’s playback controls, look for a button with a CC abbreviation, or something related to audio or subtitles. An example of this is shown in the below screenshot from the Amazon Prime channel, where the closed captions option is actually just setting subtitles to the same language as your main audio.

4. Reboot or reset your device. If all the above steps don’t resolve your closed captioning issues, you can consider broader steps such as rebooting the device, or even doing a full factory reset.
   

Causes of Roku Closed Captioning Not Turning Off

There are a few reasons your Roku may be showing closed captioning when you aren’t expecting it. The most obvious is that system captions were turned on intentionally by someone other than you. This might be another user of your Roku, but it could also happen during a channel or system upgrade.

In addition, each channel on your Roku device can also have its own closed captioning settings which override the system-level settings. So setting captions off at the system level, but on at the channel level, would also account for their unexpected display. Someone may have even inadvertently turned them on for your current content when using the playback controls.