How to get rid of that annoying AI dubbing on YouTube

David Lee

13.1.2026

Translation: Elicia Payne

For some time now, YouTube’s been annoying users with poor AI dubbing. The good news is, there’s a permanent way to get rid of it.

Automatic dubbing on YouTube is annoying. The translations are bad, it uses completely inappropriate voices and the sound design of the original is broken. Plus, you get the issues that even the best dubbing has – for example, German needs many more syllables than English, therefore everything has to be spoken quickly.

Bottom line is: it’s terrible. Yet, YouTube’s activated the feature by default, both when watching or creating on the platform. Thankfully, we can do something about it.

How to deactivate automatic dubbing

FYI: this article describes the present situation (mid-January 2026). YouTube’s constantly changing, so a ton of things could be different in the future.

If you have a YouTube account, you can stop automatic dubbing in the settings. If you don’t log in to watch videos, we recommend installing a browser plug-in.

In your YouTube account, click on your user icon at the top right, select «Settings» in the menu and then «Playback and performance». Click on «Add or edit languages» and select all the languages you want to see in the original. For English, you don’t have to select all regions. The general «English» is enough.

When logged out, it depends whether you allow YouTube to save cookies and the history. If you refuse to do this, your settings won’t be saved and you’ll have to deactivate it for every video. You do this by clicking on the cogwheel at the bottom right and selecting the original under «Audio track». For Shorts, you’ll find the entry under the three dots at the top right.

The browser plug-in YouTube Anti Translate (Chrome/Firefox), which works well from my experience so far, saves you from having to constantly switch it off. It’ll play all videos with the original track. There’s also a Firefox version of the plug-in subscription for Android.

If you enable cookies and history, YouTube remembers which audio track you last selected and applies this to other videos. YouTube may continue to auto-synchronise videos in other original languages. This has never happened to me, but I’d still recommend the above-mentioned plug-in even with cookies.

How to prevent your own videos from being dubbed

It’s best to stop the synchronisation nonsense right in the creating phase. It’s very simple. Go to YouTube Studio and click on the settings. Now deactivate the option under «Channel» > «Advanced settings» > «Allow automatic dubbing». This will be applied to all future videos, but not retroactively. If you want to get rid of dubbed tracks that have already been created, you’ll have to delete them individually in each video.

David Lee

Senior Editor

David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.ch

My interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.

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