Viki Dual Subtitles: What to Use After Learn Mode

For a few years Viki had the best language-learning setup of any streaming site. Learn Mode put two subtitle lines on screen — the language spoken in the show and your own — and let you click a word to see what it meant. Then it was gone, and the forums filled with the same question, asked the same way: it just disappeared, what do I use now?

This is the practical answer: how to get two subtitle lines back on Viki, what the setup can and can't do, and the one thing about Viki's subtitles that decides whether any of it works on the show you're about to start.

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Is Viki Learn Mode coming back?

No. Rakuten removed Learn Mode on 31 July 2023 and hasn't reinstated it. It isn't hidden behind a setting, a plan, or a region — the feature was retired from both the website and the apps, and Viki's own help centre says so.

What it did is worth naming, because it's the checklist for a replacement: two subtitle tracks at once, click a word for its meaning, hear it pronounced, and replay a line without scrubbing the timeline.

What replaced it

Nothing inside Viki. The replacement is a browser extension that adds the second line to the player you're already using — you keep watching on Viki, in the same tab, with the same account.

Linglass does this for free in any Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera). It reads the subtitle tracks the Viki player itself loads, keeps the one in the language you're learning, and draws your own language on a second line underneath. Every word on the top line is clickable for its meaning and pronunciation, and words worth keeping go into a review deck — so the Learn Mode checklist above is covered, plus the saved-vocabulary half Learn Mode never had.

If you already tried the usual extensions and got nothing, that's expected: Language Reactor, Migaku and Trancy all cover Netflix and YouTube and none of them run on Viki. That gap is why the forum answer to "what do I use now" has stayed unsatisfying for three years.

There's one nice side effect of how Viki is built: every language on a title shares a single set of subtitle timings, so the two lines can't drift apart. On Netflix the tracks are timed independently and have to be matched cue by cue; on Viki they're already aligned by construction.

Viki's subtitles are translations, not transcripts

Here's the thing that decides everything else, and it's the part missing from every other guide.

Viki's subtitles are made by volunteers, and they translate away from the language being spoken. A Korean drama gets subtitled into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Arabic and a dozen more — because that's what the audience needs. The Korean line, the one a Korean learner actually wants, is the one nobody needed to write.

So the question isn't "does this extension work on Viki." It's which direction you're learning in:

You're learning a language Viki translates into — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian — while watching an Asian drama. This works well and it's Viki's strongest case. The track you want almost always exists, in the language the community subtitles most, and where it's thin or missing entirely the extension can generate it, because that language isn't in the audio.

You're learning the language spoken on screen — Korean from a K-drama, Mandarin from a C-drama. This is the harder direction, and the honest answer is: sometimes. We checked the twenty titles trending on Viki. Only half carried any subtitle track in the language actually spoken on screen, and those that did ranged wildly in how finished they were — a couple sat at 0% and 5%, some in the middle at 44% and 56%, and only a handful were essentially done at 97% and 100%.

And no tool fixes that half. If a Chinese drama has no Chinese subtitle track, the extension won't invent a Chinese line to sit under Chinese speech — that would be a machine translation of the audio you can already hear, pinned to it, wrong in the exact places you'd be learning from. It's a real limit of the platform, not a setting you missed.

Completion percentages, and why a track dies mid-episode

Viki publishes how complete each language is for each title — and this is the single most useful number on the site if you're studying, because volunteer tracks are often partly done.

A half-finished track is worse than a missing one. It renders normally for a minute or two, then quietly stops while the episode keeps playing. It doesn't look like an unfinished translation; it looks like your extension broke.

So Linglass reads that number before it renders anything and acts on it:

• Above 95% — use the community track as-is. It's a real human translation and it's better than any machine.
• Above 80% — use it, and fill the gaps. The human lines stay; the holes get a machine translation so the line never goes blank mid-scene.
• 80% or below — ignore it and translate the whole line instead, so at least it's consistent from the first minute to the last.

You can check the same thing yourself before committing to a 16-episode series: open the title's subtitle list and look at the percentage next to your language. Anything under about 80% will leave you stranded partway through.

Setting it up

1. Install Linglass from the Chrome Web Store.
2. In its settings, pick the language you're learning and the language you want the translation in.
3. Open any episode on Viki. Both lines render in the player.

That's the whole configuration, and it's per-account, not per-title — once set, it applies to everything you open. If only one line appears, it's almost always the catalog problem above rather than the setup: check whether the title actually carries a track in the language you're learning.

Reading the line: meaning and pronunciation on tap

Two lines on screen is the easy half. The half that turns an episode into vocabulary is being able to act on a word the moment you hear it.

Click any word on the subtitle line and you get its meaning and its pronunciation — romanization for Korean, pinyin with tones for Mandarin, kana for Japanese — without pausing the scene or copying characters into a separate dictionary tab. Tap the heart and it's saved. Saved words go into spaced-repetition review, so a phrase you liked in episode 3 comes back a few days later instead of scrolling past forever.

This is the part Learn Mode had halfway. It could show you a word's meaning; it couldn't keep it.

When Viki isn't the right place to study a show

Worth saying plainly, because the alternative is often one search away.

If you're learning Korean or Mandarin and the title you want has no original-language track — or has one sitting at 30% — Viki is the wrong place to study that particular show. It's still a fine place to watch it. But the same drama is frequently on Netflix, which ships professional subtitles in the original language far more consistently, or on YouTube in official clip form, where a missing caption track can be generated from the audio outright.

Use Viki for what it's uniquely good at: catalog depth, and community translations into languages the big platforms skip entirely. Switch platforms for the titles where the track you need doesn't exist. Your settings follow you either way.

Frequently asked questions

Can you get dual subtitles on Viki?

Yes, with a free browser extension. Viki's player renders one subtitle track at a time, so an extension like Linglass keeps the track in the language you're learning and draws your own language on a second line below it. It works in Chrome, Edge, Brave and Opera.

Is Viki Learn Mode gone for good?

Yes. Rakuten retired Learn Mode on 31 July 2023 across the website and the apps, and has not brought it back. A browser extension now covers what it did — two subtitle lines, click-to-translate and pronunciation — and adds saved vocabulary with spaced-repetition review.

What is the best Viki Learn Mode alternative?

A browser extension that runs inside the Viki player, so you keep the same account and catalog. Linglass is free and covers the full Learn Mode checklist: both subtitle lines at once, tap any word for meaning and pronunciation, and one-tap saving into review.

Does Language Reactor work on Viki?

No. Language Reactor supports Netflix and YouTube only. Migaku and Trancy don't cover Viki either — which is why the question comes up so often in Korean-learning forums.

Why does my Viki subtitle track stop partway through an episode?

Because it's an unfinished community translation. Viki's subtitles are written by volunteers and each language has a completion percentage; a track at 40% renders for a while and then simply has no more lines. Check the percentage next to your language before starting a series — under roughly 80% and you'll be stranded partway.

Can I learn Korean from a K-drama on Viki if there's no Korean subtitle track?

Not properly, and no tool changes that. Viki's volunteers translate away from the spoken language, so the original-language track is the one least likely to exist. Generating a Korean line from Korean audio would just put a machine transcription under speech you can already hear. For those titles, Netflix usually carries the professional original-language track instead.

Does this work on the Viki mobile app?

No. Browser extensions run in desktop browsers only, so the Viki iOS and Android apps can't load them. On desktop, viki.com works in any Chromium browser.

Quick recap

• Learn Mode is not coming back — Rakuten retired it on 31 July 2023. A browser extension replaces it inside the same player.
• Linglass is free and adds both subtitle lines on Viki, plus tap-to-translate, pronunciation and one-tap flashcards.
• Viki's subtitles are volunteer translations away from the spoken language. Learning English or Spanish from an Asian drama works broadly; learning Korean or Mandarin depends on whether the community wrote an original-language track.
• Check the completion percentage next to your language before starting a series — below about 80% and the track will run out mid-way.
• When the track you need doesn't exist, that show is better studied on Netflix or YouTube. Your settings carry over.