Alternatively you can watch the video on mute with captions turned on, which is my favorite approach

To me, that's like the worst of both worlds. You have text, but you can't read it at your own chosen speed.

You can always pick a faster / slower playback speed in YT

And you get to keep the images, which are not there for the text-only version

YT maxes out at 2x, which is extremely slow

If you're on desktop: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-playback-s...

Go beyond 2x!

No need for an extension -- I'm paranoid and rather not install anything unless absolutely necessary -- when a simple one-liner bookmarklet will do:

  javascript:(() => { document.querySelector("video").playbackRate = 16; })();

I make a few copies for different rates (1.75x, 2.5x, etc.); this is the one I use to fast-forward ads whenever my ad-blocker fails.

Love this extension. I watch almost everything at 2.5x now.

You can also play the YouTube video with your eyes closed to get the audiobook version.

People have been watching subtitled movies for decades.

Indeed, people outside of USA (and France, Germany, and a few others that dub everything) have lived with this their entire lives. Even today my wife and I watch with subtitles as it's not always easy to hear all of the dialogue over the other noises in movies/shows.