WebVTT

[nt1m]

Description

WebVTT is a feature to display text track synchronized to videos. Very often those are subtitles, but don't have to be.

Many major websites don't use WebVTT and instead often use custom solutions, probably due to poor interoperability in this area. This means that it's harder to have features such as PiP work well with subtitles. Custom solutions also tend to sacrifice some accessibility (WebVTT is declarative, and standardized, so tools can process it with ease).

There is an existing test suite for WebVTT Rendering. Low scores demonstrate a severe lack of interoperability between browsers, with no browser passing more than 30% of the tests.

Specification

https://w3c.github.io/webvtt/

web-feature

No response

Test Links

https://wpt.fyi/results/webvtt?label=experimental&label=master&aligned

Additional Signals

Ongoing investigation: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop-webvtt

[github-actions]

This comment was automatically generated based on the information you provided. Please don't edit it.

Below is additional information about the web feature (from the web-features project) which is referenced in your proposal.
If this doesn't accurately correspond to your proposal, please update your initial comment to include web-features: <feature-id>.
To find feature IDs, use the web-features explorer.

Feature WebVTT

• ID: webvtt
• Name: WebVTT
• Description: WebVTT is a captions and subtitles format. WebVTT files are loaded using the <track> element, and the VTTCue API can be used to create or update cues dynamically.
• Baseline status: Widely Available
• Docs: WebVTT API
• Chrome use counter: chromestatus.com
• WPT tests: wpt.fyi/results/?q=feature:webvtt
• More information: See the web-features explorer

[wpt-interop]

Thank you for proposing WebVTT for Interop 2026.

We are pleased to let you know that it has been accepted as part of the WebVTT investigation.

You’ll be able to track progress on this topic throughout the year via the Interop 2026 dashboard.

Posted on behalf of the Interop team.