How Live Captions Work on Mac

How Live Captions Work on Mac

Turn videos, meetings, streams, and local media into readable text without changing the app you use.

Choose system audio, a microphone, or both. Each source can have its own recognition and translation languages.

Start with system audio

System-audio captioning works from the digital sound your Mac is already playing, avoiding microphone echo and room noise.

Choose a clear layout

Place the floating subtitle bar near your visual focus, increase the type size, and keep enough recent text to preserve context.

Know the limits

Protected media, overlapping speakers, heavy music, and specialist vocabulary can affect capture or recognition quality.

Can I caption my voice and the other side of a call?

Yes. Choose microphone and system audio together for separate source labels and independent recognition and translation languages. Use headphones to reduce echo. This does not identify every remote speaker.

What Mac is required?

macOS 15 or later on an Apple-silicon Mac (M1 or newer). Intel Macs are not supported.

Yes. After the required Apple language resources or local Whisper model are downloaded once, audio capture, recognition, and translation run on the Mac. Internet may be needed only for the first resource download.

What is included in the free trial?

New users receive 120 minutes of live captions and 60 minutes of file transcription. Live time counts only while captions are produced; file allowance counts processed audio duration.

Choose the next guide for your task

Use the related guides below to continue with the task you actually need: following live speech, translating it, preparing a file transcript, checking privacy or fixing audio permissions. Each guide explains its own setup and limits. Check your actual app, audio route and supported languages before a long session.