Hi YouTube team,

My name is William Yohei, and I'm a software engineer currently seeking opportunities to contribute to impactful products. I would like to propose a new feature for the YouTube video player experience that enhances accessibility and searchability of spoken content:

📌 The Problem
Currently, YouTube subtitles are rendered dynamically — only the portion of the subtitle that corresponds to the current playback time is exposed in the DOM. As a result, users cannot search through the full transcript using Ctrl + F, making it difficult to locate specific content in long-form videos.

💡 Proposed Feature
Enable users to search through the entire subtitle transcript, and:

Display matching captions with timestamps.

Allow users to click and jump to the moment in the video where that term appears.

Show visual highlights on the progress bar indicating where the searched term appears, similar to chapter markers or ads.

⚙️ Technical Idea
If YouTube could expose the full subtitle content through a structured API or preload it in the background, it would be feasible to build a client-side index for instant search. This would:

Greatly improve user navigation.

Encourage rewatching or exploring specific moments.

Provide engagement insights into the most searched portions of a video.

Best regards,
William Yohei
Linkedin