How to Turn On Subtitles and Captions on Bilibili

The direct answer first: Bilibili subtitles are per-video, not per-account. There is no single “English subtitles” switch on the main site. What you actually have are three different tools, each with its own limits — and knowing which one you’re using saves a lot of frustration.

Last verified 2026-08-30. Player layouts and app features change; treat this as orientation, not a permanent manual. We re-check within 30 days.

The three things people call “subtitles on Bilibili”

1. Creator-uploaded captions (CC). A video can carry captions only if the uploader added them — usually in Chinese, occasionally in English. This is the standard caption control in the player, and it is entirely at each creator’s discretion.
2. AI subtitles and dubbing in the international app. Bilibili’s international Android app promotes expanded language support and AI dubbing for some content (observed on the public app listing, 2026-08-26). We have not verified which specific videos carry these features — treat them as per-video, per-region and per-account.
3. Browser page translation. Your browser can translate the page chrome — titles, menus and comments — into English. It never touches the spoken audio, but for navigation and community context it works well.

Turning on a video’s captions

On a video page, open the player controls and look for the caption (CC) control:

• If the video carries captions, the control toggles them on and off. Some videos offer more than one caption track — the same control shows which ones exist.
• If the video has no captions, the control won’t appear at all. This is the single most common misunderstanding: there is nothing wrong with your account or your settings. The creator simply didn’t upload captions for that video.

A practical habit: before committing to a long video, check whether the caption control exists at all. On our verified video index, every card records what we actually observed at video level — including caption status — so you can pick caption-friendly videos before you ever open the player.

Reading the page without Chinese

Browser page translation is the workhorse for everything around the video: video titles, channel names, navigation menus and comment sections. It won’t help you follow the narration, but it turns a Chinese-only page into one you can navigate comfortably.

One caution: machine-translated titles and comments can be misleading in both directions. We wrote a whole guide on when to trust English translation on Bilibili — read it before you build opinions on translated text alone.

What about the international app?

The international app is where Bilibili is concentrating its language work: the listing promotes expanded interface language support and AI dubbing on some content. That is genuinely new — but as of our last check (2026-08-26) it is promoted rather than universal, and we did not verify per-video availability. The main website (bilibili.com) remains Chinese-first with no site-wide English interface.

If language support is the deciding factor for you, watch two things: our status notes, which re-observe the app and main site every 30 days, and the dated changelog tracking the international expansion.

How we handle subtitles at BiliGuide

Every video in our verified pool carries a caption observation — what we saw on the actual video page when we checked, not a guess. And we follow one strict rule: we never write “no English subtitles” about a video we haven’t personally opened. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.

Where to go next

• Can you use Bilibili in English? — the full language-options picture
• Trusting English translation on Bilibili — the limits of machine translation
• The verified video index — every card records its caption observation
• The Learn Chinese watch path — if subtitles are your study tool