Captions

Note: On March 13, 2024, YouTube announced that it is deprecating the sync parameter for the captions.insert and captions.update API endpoints. Captions auto-syncing is still available in YouTube Creator Studio. See the API revision history for more details.

A caption resource represents a YouTube caption track. A caption track is associated with exactly one YouTube video.

Methods

The API supports the following methods for captions resources:

list
Retrieve a list of caption tracks that are associated with a specified video. Note that the API response does not contain the actual captions and that the captions.download method provides the ability to retrieve a caption track. Try it now.
insert
Upload a caption track. Try it now.
update
Update a caption track. When updating a caption track, you can change the track's draft status, upload a new caption file for the track, or both. Try it now.
download
Download a caption track. The caption track is returned to its original format unless the request specifies a value for the tfmt parameter and to its original language unless the request specifies a value for the tlang parameter. Try it now.
delete
Delete a specified caption track. Try it now.

Resource representation

The following JSON structure shows the format of a captions resource:

{
  "kind": "youtube#caption",
  "etag": etag,
  "id": string,
  "snippet": {
    "videoId": string,
    "lastUpdated": datetime,
    "trackKind": string,
    "language": string,
    "name": string,
    "audioTrackType": string,
    "isCC": boolean,
    "isLarge": boolean,
    "isEasyReader": boolean,
    "isDraft": boolean,
    "isAutoSynced": boolean,
    "status": string,
    "failureReason": string
  }
}

Properties

The following table defines the properties that appear in this resource: