Subtitle appearance: size, width, colors and backdrop

Subtitles should be readable at a glance and otherwise stay out of the way. Everything about how they look is under Settings → then Overlay → then Subtitles — open the Overlay tab and choose Subtitles at the top (the other option, Main overlay, styles the Listening and Speaking card).

A live Preview at the bottom of the page shows your changes as you make them, and they apply to a running caption window immediately.

Size and width

• Text size scales every line.
• Window width is a share of your screen’s width. Wide suits a film on a big display; narrow keeps captions compact under a call window.

To move the window, just drag it — it remembers where you put it.

Colors and the pill

• Text color — the default color of every line.
• Background — the color and Opacity of the rounded pill behind each line. A translucent pill (the default) helps on busy or bright video.
• Transparent — removes the pill and shows only outlined text, for the most cinematic look on dark footage.

Backdrop for the whole window

Window opacity adds a backdrop behind all the lines together. At 0% — the default — the window is fully transparent apart from the pills. Raise it when you’re captioning something visually noisy, or when the video already has burned-in subtitles you want to cover.

A color per language

With two or three languages on screen, color is the fastest way to find yours.

The overlay’s language chips show each language’s colors as a swatch, so you can tell which line is which before you start.

Show or hide the original line

The Original transcript line is a setting of the session, not of the look: Settings → then Session → then Subtitles → then Languages → then Show original line. Keep it on when you’re learning the spoken language; turn it off when you only need to understand.

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What happens when the audio goes quiet.