Subtitles are where casting from a Mac most often falls down. A Chromecast needs subtitles as a separate text track in a format it understands, and the file you have may hold them in another format, in a legacy text encoding, or as pictures. VLC users, for example, have long reported that subtitles don’t reach the TV.
How Driftcast handles them
- Subtitles inside the file in SRT, ASS/SSA, WebVTT, MOV text and other text formats are converted to the format the Chromecast reads.
- Subtitle files beside the video are found automatically when their name starts with the video’s name, such as
Movie.en.srt. - Any text encoding works, including UTF-16 and older Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Korean files.
- Blu-ray PGS and DVD VobSub, which are pictures, are read into text on your Mac the first time you use them, so the video doesn’t need converting.
- DVB and XSUB picture subtitles are drawn into the video.
No subtitles in the file?
Choose Find Subtitles Online… from the Subtitles menu. Driftcast searches OpenSubtitles by exact file match and by title, and the one you pick downloads and comes on. This needs a free OpenSubtitles API key, and the app shows you how to get one.
Too small to read?
The Subtitles menu has a size slider from 60% to 200%. It changes the size as you drag and is remembered next time.
An honest note: Driftcast hasn’t been tried on a real Chromecast yet, and whether a Chromecast accepts separate text tracks alongside this kind of stream is still unconfirmed. Google’s documentation covers them for MP4 files. If you own one, please say how it went, working or not.
Get Driftcast
Driftcast is free and open source, with no account, trial or ads. It needs macOS 13 Ventura or later, on an Apple silicon or Intel Mac.
Download Driftcast · Source code on GitHub · Everything it plays
More guides
- How to cast MKV files to Chromecast from a Mac
- How to play MKV files on Apple TV from a Mac
- How to send any video from a Mac to a Samsung or LG TV
- How to get subtitles on Chromecast from a Mac
- How to play DTS audio on Chromecast from a Mac
- How to cast 4K HDR video from a Mac
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