YouTubers have grown more exasperated with Google’s handling of the site, as banned creators have been let back in and there’s been an aggressive push toward AI (though Google sometimes rejects it). So it’s unsurprising that creators are upset about the odd disappearance of YouTube’s advanced SRV3 caption format. You can relax a bit for now—Google says the removal is temporary and that it’s addressing the underlying bug.
Google introduced support for this proprietary subtitle format around 2018, offering creators far more customization than standard captions. SRV3 (also called YTT or YouTube Timed Text) supports custom colors, transparency, animations, fonts, and precise on-screen placement. Creators using SRV3 can color-code and place captions to distinguish multiple speakers, create sing-along effects, or style captions to match the video.
In recent days, creators used to that degree of control have expressed dismay after finding YouTube no longer accepts uploads using this Google-created format. Many feared Google had abandoned the format altogether, which would be an issue for videos already using it.
Google has since published a short notice and told Ars that it hasn’t dropped SRV3 support. Still, problems remain. The company says it has temporarily restricted delivery of SRV3 caption files because they can cause playback to fail for some viewers. That explanation is vague, but suggests an upstream change to the platform didn’t account for SRV3 compatibility. Instead of leaving affected videos broken, it has turned off most of the captions.
