If you watch a lot of videos using VLC, you might have noticed that it enables subtitles by default if they are there, which can be pretty annoying at times. Here’s the quick tip to disable them entirely.

Of course, you can always turn them back on if you want on an individual video basis.

Disable Subtitles

Head into the VLC preferences, and then click the All button at the bottom of the screen.

On the left-hand side, choose Video –> Subtitles/OSD, and then uncheck the boxes for “Autodetect subtitle files”, Enable sub-pictures, and On Screen Display. That should do it, unless the subtitles are forced in the video for some reason.

Note: Certain video formats like MKV can sometimes have subtitles enabled even though there isn’t a separate subtitles file. This is why you need to remove “Enable sub-pictures” as well, which totally disables the on-screen text. You can choose to only uncheck the autodetecting of subtitles instead if you’d prefer.

And of course, you can simply right-click on the video, head to Video –> Subtitles Track and then choose the subtitles if you still wanted them.

Note: this only works if the “enable sub-pictures” option is still enabled.

And thus ends the tale of disabling those fracking subtitles. Starbuck approves.