Smart Rewind

Turns on YouTube captions after a rewind or while muted, then restores your previous caption setting.

Smart Rewind temporarily shows YouTube's native captions when you rewind a standard desktop video. Choose a minimum rewind of 1, 3, 5, or 10 seconds. Captions turn off when playback catches up to where you were. You can also turn on the optional “Captions while muted” setting. When the YouTube video is muted or its player volume reaches zero, captions appear until sound returns. If you also rewound, they stay on until both conditions end. This option is off by default. Captions that were already on stay on, and your manual caption choice takes priority. Smart Rewind works on standard finite-duration YouTube watch videos with usable captions. It does not support Shorts, live streams, embeds, YouTube Music, or computer system mute. Playback position, the current YouTube video identifier, video mute and player volume state, and caption state are processed locally in memory. Only your extension preferences are stored locally; viewing data is not sent to the developer. Smart Rewind is independent and is not affiliated with YouTube or Google.