With Windows 10, Microsoft tried to catch up on many areas of multimedia playback as the native Windows tools have traditionally lagged behind third-party solutions. As part of those efforts, Microsoft announced native support for subtitles in the Movies & TV app, the default video player of Windows 10. Of course, as anyone who has used the app can tell you, there is no obvious way of including subtitles to videos.
The problem
Microsoft’s media players have traditionally lacked in the subtitle department as they do not make it easy to view caption videos at all. The fact that our guide on adding subtitles to Windows Media Player continues to be visited by a number of users is a testament to that. The new Movies & TV app is even worse because Microsoft simply said it would support .SRT files but then left everyone out in the cold with no indication as to how the feature works.
The solution
As with many other Microsoft-developed tools, the solution is simple but quite stupid too. In order for the subtitles to work, the videos and subtitles need to be placed in a folder where the Movies & TV app gets its content from. By default, the app only looks at the Videos folder located in C:\Users\YourUsername\Videos. You can also access the folder from Quick Access, from “This PC”, and from many other areas of your PC. However, you can also set custom locations for your content.
- Open the Movies & TV app.
- Go to the Settings.
- Click on “Choose where we look for videos”.
- Browse your computer and add your desired folder/folders.
Depending on the number of files you have in those folders, it might take a while until the app goes through everything. Your work is not done there, however. In order for the subtitles to work, they need to have the exact same name as the video file.
Provided that you have done everything correctly, you can open the video in the app and you will see a new “CC” option in the bottom toolbar. Click on that, choose your subtitles from the pop-out list and they will be enabled instantly.
