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[meta] Disabling YouTube's auto-dub feature (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by neuracnu to c/trailers
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Instructions for unfucking YouTube audio tracks for videos in other languages. I only noticed this today after some particularly attrocious auto-dubs in the trailers for the films Heysel 85 and Rose posted by Screen International. Heysel 85 really was the worst of them.

A text copy of the instructions are listed below.

I'm also going to keep this post pinned for a while. Let me know in the comments when you're sick of looking at it.

So YouTube is rolling out its trash automatic machine-generated audio dubbing to all users, enabled by default.

Here's how to turn it off.

Find a video doing the bullshit, click the gear icon on the bottom-right, then click "Audio track". It will probably have a little number by it in parenthesis.

If you just want to chage the audio for this video, you can click the original language and you're done.

If you want to fix this for every video and never have to deal with this again, click the "preferred languages" link.

This should take you to the YouTube settings page. Under "Language" and "Preferred languages", click the "Add or edit languages" link.

Check every checkbox. Every one. Even the one for Klingon.

There is no "select all" option. These are not standard checkbox html elements, so javascript tricks won't work either. You have to click each one manually. Because fuck you.

Click confirm. You're done.

Now look up "enshittification".

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[-] CatLikeLemming 1 points 1 week ago

I think, for once, someone at YouTube actually thought it was a good idea for the users too. It's like those websites that automatically change their language based on your IP instead of your browser setting. Some monolingual thought they were being nice.

Anyways, the reason it's on by default is likely because people like us will know we hate it and turn it off. The average user who would like this, which is a good few I reckon, wouldn't know to turn it on. It's like videos defaulting to 720p or 480p. Many people literally won't notice and it saves YouTube a lot of bandwidth. Meanwhile if you set it back manually a couple times, YouTube does it way less.

And my guess on the checkboxes is incompetence, not malice, the YouTube codebase is likely hellish.

this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Trailers for movies, television and games

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This is a community for posting and sharing trailers and teasers for upcoming film, television and video game premieres. The goal is to provide subscribers a curated feed of trailers for UPCOMING media. General-purpose posts about movies, television and games are better suited for other communities around the Lemmyverse. This place is just for trailers.

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