One of the most useful features of YouTube are the auto-generated subtitles. Say you're watching a video in Spanish and you can barely recognize your "como" from your "cama," the captions can help you put words in perspective and better understand what's being said. However, it's usually difficult to know which video has these subtitles before you start playing and try to turn them on. Today we learned of a neat trick that can help with that issue.

When you're browsing YouTube, whether in search results, the home tab, or any other section of the app, you only need to turn off your phone's media volume to have the CC/Subtitle tag show up. If your device is set to US English, you get the "CC" label; but if it's on UK English, you get "Subtitles." We're not sure why Google is making this differentiation when the two words aren't really interchangeable — subtitles contain only dialog, captions also contain other audible sounds and cues.

Left: Subtitle label in search results (UK English). Right: CC label on the home page (US English)

Regardless of the peculiar dialect difference, this little trick is quite handy. We don't know how long it's been in the YouTube app — could be years, could be new — but it can save you time if you watch videos in other languages than your native one and want a bit of help understanding what's being said.