How to open .SRT files (subtitles) on Android, Windows and Linux

You downloaded subtitles for a film, and now you have Film.srt next to Film.mp4. Tap the .srt on a phone and you may be told no app can open it. Or you can open it, but what you really want is to see the subtitles on the video.

Folders handles both. It opens subtitle files as text, so you can read them or fix a mistake, and its video player shows them over the film: automatically when the file sits next to the video with the same name, or when you load it yourself.

What is an .srt file?

SRT is the SubRip subtitle format, named after a program that pulled subtitles off DVDs. It’s plain text, and every subtitle is a small block like this:

12
00:01:04,500 --> 00:01:07,250
Where were you last night?

A number, a start and end time (hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds, with a comma before the milliseconds), one or two lines of text, then a blank line. Simple tags such as <i> for italics are allowed. Because it’s so simple, almost every player and video site accepts it.

Other subtitle and lyrics formats work along the same lines:

Extension	What it is	Where you meet it
.srt	SubRip: numbered blocks with start and end times	Most subtitles you download
.vtt	WebVTT: like SRT, with a WEBVTT first line, dots instead of commas in times, and positioning options	Web video and streaming sites
.ass	Advanced SubStation Alpha: styles, fonts, colours, positions and karaoke effects	Anime fansubs and carefully typeset subtitles, often made in Aegisub
.ssa	SubStation Alpha, the older version of ASS	Older fansubs
.sub	Two unrelated formats: MicroDVD text timed in frames ({1200}{1260}Hello), or VobSub pictures (binary, paired with an .idx file)	DVD rips
.lrc	Song lyrics with times, like [01:23.45]First line	Music players that scroll lyrics in time, karaoke apps

How to open an .srt file with Folders

To read or edit it on Android:

1. Install Folders from the download page and allow file access.
2. Find the subtitle file, or search for its name.
3. Tap it. It opens in the text editor.
4. From another app, tap the file and choose Open with → Folders.

To watch it with the video:

1. Put the subtitle file in the same folder as the video, with the same name: Holiday.mp4 and Holiday.srt, or Holiday.en.srt with a language code.
2. Play the video in Folders. The subtitles appear on their own.
3. If the names don’t match, open the subtitle menu in the player and choose Load from a file…, which accepts .srt, .ass, .ssa, .vtt and .sub files.

On Windows and Linux, the steps are the same: double-click the subtitle file in Folders to edit it, or the video to watch it. On Windows the installer also adds Folders to File Explorer’s Open with menu for subtitle files.

What you can do with it in Folders

In the text editor:

• Fix a typo, a broken line or a wrong name, and Save.
• Find and replace (with Match case) to correct a name spelled wrong throughout, or find the “subtitles by…” advert lines some sites add at the start and end.
• Go to line, word wrap, undo and redo.
• Document info shows the encoding, which explains most “strange letters” problems. Saving keeps the file’s encoding.

In the video player:

• Subtitles beside the video load by themselves; Load from a file… picks any other.
• Search online… finds subtitles without an account. It guesses the title from the video’s file name, lists the closest matches first, and saves your choice beside the video (for example Movie.eng.srt), so it’s there next time.
• Delay, size and colour can be adjusted while you watch.
• ASS and SSA files play, but their styling shows as plain text.

An .lrc file opens as text in Folders. Its audio player doesn’t scroll lyrics along with the song.

Other ways to open .srt files

• VLC and mpv play videos with subtitle files on Windows, Linux and Android.
• Subtitle Edit (free, Windows) edits, syncs and converts subtitles, and can turn picture subtitles into text.
• Aegisub (free) is the editor for styled ASS subtitles.
• Gaupol is a simple subtitle editor on Linux.

Problems opening an .srt file?

• The subtitles are out of sync. If they’re early or late by the same amount throughout, use the player’s Delay setting. If they start in sync and drift further off, the frame rates differ (say, subtitles made for a 25 fps release played on a 23.976 fps one): Subtitle Edit can change the frame rate, or look for subtitles made for your exact release.
• Letters come out wrong (“é”, question marks, or nonsense in place of Cyrillic, Greek or Arabic). The file uses an older regional encoding. Folders reads UTF-8, UTF-16 and Windows-1252; convert other encodings to UTF-8 in Subtitle Edit or Notepad++.
• The subtitles don’t appear by themselves. The file must be in the same folder and have the same name as the video, apart from an optional language code. Capital letters don’t matter.
• A .sub file is unreadable gibberish. It’s the VobSub kind, which holds pictures of the subtitles, not text. Keep it with its .idx file for players like VLC, or turn it into SRT with Subtitle Edit’s OCR.

Questions people ask

How do I convert SRT to VTT? Save it as WebVTT in Subtitle Edit, or run ffmpeg -i subs.srt subs.vtt. Folders edits subtitle files but doesn’t convert them.

How do I add subtitles to a video permanently? That’s called burning them in, and it means re-encoding the video with a tool such as HandBrake or FFmpeg. Folders shows subtitles alongside the video without changing the video file.

Is an SRT file safe? Yes. It’s plain text and can’t run anything. Be wary of “subtitle” downloads that turn out to be .exe files or archives containing one.

SRT vs ASS: which should I use? SRT for plain dialogue: it works everywhere. ASS when the look matters, such as signs, songs and positioned text, in players that draw its styles.

More on video: how to play MKV videos with subtitles and how to open MP4 files, or see all 382 file types Folders opens.