How to get subtitles for a video, or make them on your Mac
Updated · For Fetchii 1.1 · 3 min read
Short answer
If the video has subtitles, turn on Download the site's subtitles in Fetchii's Settings → Downloads and they're saved with the video. If it has none, Fetchii on an Apple Silicon Mac creates them from the audio, on your Mac, as an SRT file; nothing is uploaded.
Step by step
1
Download the video's own subtitles
Open Fetchii → Settings → Downloads. Under Subtitles, turn on Download the site's subtitles and tick your Subtitle languages. Embed subtitles in video (on by default) adds them as a track you can switch on and off in your player. Turn on Include auto-generated subtitles to also get a site's automatic captions.
[Screenshot: Settings, Downloads tab, Subtitles section with languages ticked]
2
Or turn subtitles on for one download
Click the options button at the right end of the link field (or press ⌘N), open Advanced Options and tick Download subtitles. These options override your settings for that download only.
3
No subtitles? Create them on your Mac
On an Apple Silicon Mac, right-click a finished download and choose Generate subtitles, or hover over it, click the sparkles button (Intelligence) and choose Generate subtitles. The first time, Fetchii downloads its speech model and prepares it, which can take a few minutes.
[Screenshot: Intelligence popover on a finished download with Generate subtitles]
4
Make it automatic
In Settings → Intelligence → Subtitles, turn on Generate subtitles automatically on this Mac. Spoken language is set to Detect automatically; pick a language if detection gets it wrong. If a subtitle file is already saved next to the video, Fetchii doesn't create another.
5
Translate them, if you need to
In Settings → Intelligence → Translation, choose a language under Into and how to Translate with: Apple (on your Mac, macOS 15 or later), On-device (Fetchii's own model) or Online with your own DeepL, OpenAI or Anthropic API key. Use Translate subtitles automatically, or translate one video with Translate to … in its Intelligence popover.
Please note:Subtitles you download belong to the video's creator; keep them with videos you have the right to save.
More you can do
Where the files go
Created subtitles are saved as an SRT file next to the video, named like My video.en.srt. Translations get their own file, like My video.fr.srt.
15 translation languages
English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Choose a faster or more accurate model
In Settings → Intelligence → On-Device Models, the Speech model comes in Best quality and Faster. Fetchii shows each model's size before it downloads.
Yes, once the speech model is downloaded. Speech recognition runs on your Mac and the audio is never uploaded. Online translation is the only option that sends subtitle text over the internet, directly to the provider you choose.
Do I need an Apple Silicon Mac?
To create or translate subtitles, yes. Downloading a video's own subtitles works on Intel Macs too.
Which spoken languages can it recognise?
Leave Spoken language on Detect automatically, or choose English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Portuguese or Italian.
Can I make subtitles for a video file I already have?
Fetchii creates subtitles for videos in its download list. It doesn't open video files from elsewhere.
