TVs, and especially the nearly ubiquitous smart TVs, are a gateway to endless entertainment.
With so many different streaming platforms available and the entertainment industry’s increasing focus on entertainment made for watching at home, it may seem like you will never run out of things to watch.
Okay, so yes, TVs are awesome, but they can also occasionally present some difficulties that can be incredibly irritating and ultimately ruin your ability to enjoy the show or movie that you are trying to watch.
One of the most irritating (but unfortunately quite common) problems that people run into when using their televisions is when there is a narrator describing what is happening on screen.
Of course, this feature is great because it improves the accessibility of the TV-watching experience. But for those who do not require this feature, it can be very annoying, and it can also seem quite difficult to turn the narrator off.
If you have found yourself in this position, then you have come to the right place. In this article, we talk about how to turn off TV audio narration on a variety of streaming platforms and a variety of TV brands.
Also known as audio description or voice guidance, this feature uses modern text-to-speech technology to help narrate text displayed on the screen.
The narrator in your TV is an audio setting that provides information on important visual elements of a TV program. It also explains various menu options, channels, and volume levels. This is useful for those who need more help understanding what’s displayed on the screen.
Since the feature, known on some systems as TalkBack, reads out captions displayed on the screen, it comes in handy for visually impaired people. They can easily follow what’s showing on the screen without looking at it.
If someone accidentally enabled the narration or TalkBack feature on your TV settings, it will affect all programs that support the feature.
However, the audio description feature may not work with some streaming services like Netflix. Also, it’s a feature that TV companies introduced in the early 2010s, so some TV models will only narrate when there’s text to be displayed. This usually includes menu items.
Moreover, narration won’t work with most external devices, including video game consoles, Blu-ray, and cable boxes.
If you’re hearing audio descriptions on your TV, it’s likely because someone in your household turned it on by mistake. For example, pressing and holding the remote volume button on most Samsung smart TVs quickly turns on the Accessibility feature.
It’s therefore easy to activate the narration by accident. Otherwise, someone could’ve turned on the voice guidance intentionally.
Turning off the TV narration on Apple TV devices is not difficult. However, the correct steps to remedy this problem will depend on which generation of Apple TV you are using. In this article, we will give the steps to turn off TV narration on Apple TV (3rd Generation) and Apple HD TV (also known as Apple TV (4th Generation).
To return to the main menu, press the lower-left button (Menu) repeatedly until you hear a stop sound.
1. Turn on your TV and find your Apple TV remote.
2. Press Down once.
3. To select Settings, press Right repeatedly until you hear a stop sound. If you changed the layout of the main menu, you might not have Settings here. Use the arrow buttons on your remote to highlight Settings.
4. Press Select twice.
5. Press Down repeatedly until you hear a stop sound.
6. Press Up four times. Accessibility should be highlighted.
7. Press Select twice. VoiceOver should turn on and begin reading the content on your Apple TV screen.
With these devices, there are three ways to turn VoiceOver on or off.
1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver, then turn VoiceOver on or off.
2. Hold the Siri button on your Siri Remote*, then say "Turn VoiceOver on" or "Turn VoiceOver off."
3. On your remote, press the Menu button or the Back button three times to turn VoiceOver on or off.
To turn off the narrator on Amazon Prime, you will have to do so while you are watching a television show or movie. It is not possible to turn off the narrator when a show or movie is not playing.
1. While watching a video on Prime, hover your remote at the bottom or swipe down for a menu if you’re using a touch screen device, a speech bubble should come up and expand.
2. Highlight and click on “Audio & Languages”, move down to Language options, highlight “English (U.S)” without the AD tag, and select; that should turn it off.
3. If your settings were already set to “English (US)”, try setting them to “English (UK)” or any other English option without the AD tag.
The narrator function on HBO Max can come up for a number of reasons, and it is not always because someone has turned the narrator function on.
Asides from users having their audio description turned on, the HBO Max app also occasionally experiences a bug that causes the narrator to come on when customers watch movies in foreign languages.
For this reason, there are two methods for turning TV narration off on HBO Max. The first method should be able to fix the bug if it is the bug that is at issue.
1. If your HBO Max app is experiencing a bug, then the first thing you should do is update your HBO Max device. In fact, simply updating your device could be all you need to fix the problem. If this doesn’t work try the next method.
2. Like Amazon Prime, you can only turn the narration feature off (if it is switched on) while watching a show or movie. So, while watching a show or movie, click on “Caption Settings.” On the “Audio” option ensure that “English – Original” is highlighted. Next, click on “English-Audio Descriptive”. Then click again on “English-Original.” Next click X to close.
These two methods should be able to fix the problem. However, if you find that these methods do not work, then you may want to contact customer service for HBO Max.
For Xfinity users, there are a number of methods for turning off voice narration, and the easiest way is most likely to use voice control to turn off narration. Of course, not all TVs have the voice control function, so we will cover the full range of methods for fixing the voice narration problem on Xfinity.
1. While watching a video, press and hold the voice control button on your Xfinity Voice Remote and say “audio description” to turn the audio description off. It is as simple as that!
1. Press the down arrow on your Xfinity remote while watching the full-screen video. The transport bar will pop up on the lower third of your TV screen.
2. Press the left arrow twice to go to the audio description option.
3. Press OK to turn the audio description on or off.
1. Grab your remote and press the Xfinity button. The X1 main menu will come up.
2. Using the Xfinity button or the up/down arrow buttons, go to the Settings menu.
3. Press the OK button to enter the menu.
4. Once in the Settings menu, use the arrow buttons to navigate to the Accessibility Settings.
5. Press OK to select it.
6. From Accessibility Settings, use the arrow buttons to go to Audio Description. Press OK to turn the audio description off.
7. Simply press Exit to return to viewing your program, as the problem should be fixed!
1. Open your Samsung Smart TV.
2. Go to Settings.
3. After that, you’ll see many options on the screen, select “Smart Feature.”
4. Then search for the “Voice recognition” option in the Smart feature Menu.
5. After finding “Voice Recognition,” select it and Go to the “voice recognition setting.”
6. The last step is to turn it off.
While not all Sony televisions have voice narration functionality, many do. Also, Sony TVs are not known to have bugs that trigger the voice narration, so if you hear voice narration while you are watching a TV show or Movie, then you can be sure that the voice narration feature is turned on. Luckily, there is an easy fix!
1. Turn on your Sony Smart TV, Go to settings.
2. Click on the Accessibility option.
3. Open the Accessibility menu, then select Services.
4. In the Services Menu, you would see two options, “Talkback” and “Screen Reader.”
5. Turn off both options by unselecting them.
6. Then again, go back to the Accessibility menu.
7. Find the Accessibility Shortcut and turn it off.
1. Turn on your LG TV.
2. To deactivate the voice narrator goes to Settings.
3. Select General > then select Accessibility.
4. Then from Accessibility select Audio Description.
5. Turn off the Audio Description.
1. Turn on your ROKU Smart TV using your Roku remote.
2. Find and select the Settings Menu.
3. Then go to the Accessibility option.
4. Select Audio Guide in Accessibility Menu.
5. Turn off Audio Guide and enjoy using ROKU TV without any voice.
While streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are common streaming choices for personal use at home, we cannot end this article without talking about those who use streaming services in a commercial environment like a restaurant, a medical waiting room, or a Salon.
There are tons of benefits from streaming TV especially geared toward businesses. For one, businesses need to make sure that the content that they show is fully licensed so that they do not run into any legal trouble.
Loop TV offers fully licensed streaming to businesses, but that is only one reason that Loop TV is such a popular option. It offers tons of music videos, tv shows, sports, and much more all for free.
And you know what is also great about Loop TV for business? You do not have to run into any problems with voice narration. This is a major plus because voice narration would seriously ruin the mood in a business environment. So, with Loop TV, you can entertain your customers free of worries and for no cost at all.
There is no question that televisions are such an integral part of so many people’s lives. Movies and TV shows make us laugh, cry, think, and when needed, relax without thinking too much.
That is the magic of movies and television. However, when we run into problems with our TVs, it can be so extremely frustrating. It's like the entertainment we have been waiting for is right at our fingertips, but there is just one small issue blocking our paths from full enjoyment.
That issue for many people is the audio narration feature that has become so common for smart TVs from nearly all of the top brands.
Luckily, it is usually a very easy fix to turn off the audio narration, and after reading this article, we hope that you are able to get back to enjoying your entertainment to the fullest.
