Microsoft has released a new media player app labeled Movies & TV with Windows 10, it still consists of the Windows Media Player. It’s a wise move, considering there are a number of people who still use the Windows Media Player for its simplicity. While Windows Media Player is great when it comes to handling, simple media playing tasks, you are here because you haven’t been capable to add external subtitles to videos in the application.

If you explore the web, you will find several methods that claim to repair subtitle addition in Windows Media Player, however, in our experience, most of these approaches don’t really work. we tried different options and we did manage to add subtitles in Windows Media Player.

How to Add Subtitles in Windows Media Player:

STEP 1:

To ensure that the video file and its subtitle file feature the exact same name. Windows Media Player does not add subtitles manually and it only detects the subtitles when they have the same name as the video.

How to Add Subtitles in Windows Media Player

STEP 2:

Once done, open Windows Media Player and in the Library Mode, go to Play->Lyrics, captions, and subtitles and click on “On if available“.  You can also find this option in the Now Playing Mode by right clicking on the top.

How to Add Subtitles in Windows Media Player

STEP 3:

Download the DirectVobSub (VSFilter) codec and install it on your PC. It’s available for both 32-bit and 64-bit machines. You only need to install the codec and there’s no need to configure anything. Make sure to download the codec from the official website, as people have reported of it packing malware when downloaded from other sources.

Note:

Some users report that subtitles started working after these steps, so we should play a video and check if subtitles are working in Windows Media Player. If not, just follow the steps below.

STEP 4:

Once done, you will have to download and install Shark007’s Advanced codec for Windows Media Player. After it’s installed, open the 64bit Settings Application or 32bit Settings Application depending on your PC. You will have to launch it with administrator rights by right clicking on the application and clicking “Run as Administrator“.

How to Add Subtitles in Windows Media Player

STEP 5:

When the application opens, go to the tabs of different video file types and check the option that “disable Media Foundation for MP4/AVI/MKV etc., Also, head to the “Swap” tab and check “disable Windows Media Foundation“.

How to Add Subtitles in Windows Media Player

After you are done with the above-mentioned steps, you can just open a video file in Windows Media Player and you must see the subtitles working fine. If they still don’t work, there might be some problem with the subtitle file. In that case, try changing its file name from .srt to .sub. We have tested the process, so its works fine.

How to Add Subtitles in Windows Media Player