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How do I turn on subtitles on IPTV?
How do you turn on subtitles in TiviMate, Smarters and on a MAG box?
You turn on subtitles from the player controls of the app you watch in. Menu names change a little between versions, so look for the closest match.
| App or device | How to turn subtitles on | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| TiviMate | While the channel or movie plays, press OK once, then press Down to reach the row of icons. Select the CC icon (Closed captions) and pick a language. On many versions, holding OK opens the same options. | Choose Off in the same list to hide them again. |
| Smarters Pro and Smarters Player Lite | Press OK or tap the screen to show the player controls, then select the CC or subtitles icon and pick a track. | A greyed-out icon means the stream has no subtitle track. |
| MAG box | While a channel plays, press Menu on the remote, then move Left or Right until the Subtitles list appears, and pick a language. | Default language and text size are under Playback in the box settings. Portals can differ. |
Setup help for each app is in our TiviMate setup guide, the Smarters Pro guide and the MAG box guide.
Do the Fire TV and Google TV caption settings work in IPTV apps?
Usually not. The device caption switch mainly controls the maker's own apps, while most IPTV players have their own subtitle control. Turning it on does no harm, and some players use its text size and colour.
- Fire TV: Settings, Accessibility, Closed Captions.
- Android TV, such as an Nvidia Shield: Settings, Device Preferences, Accessibility, Captions.
- Google TV: Settings, System (on some models), Accessibility, Captions, then turn on Display. Google's help page warns that these preferences might not apply to certain apps.
Why do some IPTV channels have no subtitles?
A channel has no subtitle option when its stream does not carry a caption track. The app can only show captions that arrive with the video.
Under the CRTC closed captioning rules, Canadian English- and French-language channels caption all of their programs between 6 a.m. and midnight. Whether those captions survive depends on how each stream is prepared before it reaches you, so one channel can show them while the next one does not. Try the other version of the channel (HD instead of 4K, for example), or the on-demand version of a movie or series, which often has several subtitle languages.
IPTV Nord customers can send us the channel name in Live Chat, and we check which version of it carries captions.
Related questions people ask
How do I turn off subtitles on IPTV?
Open the same subtitle menu you used to turn them on and choose Off or None. In TiviMate, press OK, then Down, select the CC icon and choose Off. If text still appears, turn off the caption setting of your device too, such as Settings, Accessibility, Closed Captions on a Fire TV, because some players follow it.
Can I get French subtitles on an English channel?
Only if the stream carries a French track, and most English channels in Canada caption in English only. Movies and series on demand are your best bet for a second language, since many come with several subtitle tracks. Our answer on French-language channels on IPTV covers what you can watch in French.
Why are subtitles late on live TV?
Captions on live news and sports are created in real time by captioners, so they usually trail the speech by a few seconds. That delay comes from the broadcast, not from your app. For movies, a subtitle delay option in the player can fix a mismatch. If one app handles subtitles poorly, the same login works in most other IPTV apps.
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