Closed Caption Button and Dynamic Language Change for Captions

[HamzaIsrar12]

Hi Pier,

I would like to add a closed caption button to the YouTube player to enable/disable captions dynamically. Additionally, I want to allow users to select the available languages for captions.

I already have access to the available languages through an internal API, but I'm facing an issue with changing the caption language or enabling/disabling captions after the player is initialized.

Issue/Blocker:

• It seems that changing the caption language or toggling captions is only possible through the IFramePlayerOptions, which can only be set during the player's initialization.
• The library does not support reinitializing the player after it’s been created.
• Destroying and recreating the player to apply new IFramePlayerOptions results in a glitchy experience.

Question: Is there a way to dynamically update the caption settings (enable/disable and change languages) without destroying and recreating the player? Or, is there a recommended solution to handle this more smoothly?

Any insights or workarounds would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

[PierfrancescoSoffritti]

I suggest to

1. finding a way to do this with the IFrame Player.
2. try to replicate that in the library.

If 1 is possible but 2 is not, we can work on a solution to enable it.

[Serkali-sudo]

You can get a list of available captions and select any of them without recreating the player.
I dont know why they didnt mention this in the documentation but there are options called tracklist and track.

First of all set cc_load_policy to 1 in iframe player settings.

You should use codes below inside onApiChange because onApiChange event fires when captions or other modules loaded.

You can get available captions like this:

const tracks = player.getOption('captions', 'tracklist');

it returns a json array like this:

[
  {
    "languageCode": "en",
    "languageName": "English",
    "displayName": "English",
    "kind": "",
    "name": "",
    "id": null,
    "is_servable": false,
    "is_default": false,
    "is_translateable": true,
    "vss_id": ".en"
  },
  {
    "languageCode": "fr",
    "languageName": "French",
    "displayName": "French",
    "kind": "",
    "name": "",
    "id": null,
    "is_servable": false,
    "is_default": false,
    "is_translateable": true,
    "vss_id": ".fr"
  }
]

Now that you have a list of available captions you can choose them with this:

player.setOption('captions', 'track', /*put selected json object from the list here*/);

To turn off captions programatically you can use this:

player.setOption('captions', 'track', {});

Obviously, to implement these changes you are gonna have to edit the library.
Implementing neccesary javascript interfaces to control the player from java or kotlin is for you to figure out.