Video calls
Running by default, or pointed at one app when several are talking at once.
- Zoom
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Meet
- Slack huddles
- Discord
- FaceTime
- Webex
- Whereby
- Signal
- Telegram
Subtitles · Compatible apps
Subtitles captions the app,
not the service.
Subtitles taps the audio a macOS application is playing, so there is no integration to build and no list of supported partners. If an app makes sound on your Mac, it captions. The list below exists because people reasonably want to see their own app in it, not because anything had to be added.
Launch week: $5 instead of $9 until 22 August · 14-day refund
14-day refund, no questions asked
One-time $9, every future update included ·
macOS 14.2 or later · Apple Silicon
Unlimited captions, for as long as you like. No minutes to buy, no
account, no subscription.
Apps people ask about
Grouped by what you are doing rather than by vendor. Nothing here is a special case in the code: each one is an app playing audio, which is the only category the app actually has.
Browsers
It captures the helper processes a browser spawns, which is where browser audio comes from.
- Safari
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Arc
- Brave
- Edge
- Orion
- Vivaldi
Video players
The player is irrelevant: it reads what the app outputs, not the file.
- QuickTime Player
- VLC
- IINA
- mpv
- Infuse
- Plex
- Jellyfin
Streaming in a tab or an app
Most of these ship captions of their own. This is for the titles where they are missing or in the wrong language.
- YouTube
- Netflix
- Disney+
- Prime Video
- Apple TV
- Twitch
- Vimeo
- Max
Podcasts and audio
Music is skipped by a voice detector, so a backing track never becomes lyrics.
- Apple Podcasts
- Overcast
- Pocket Casts
- Castro
- Spotify
- Apple Music
- Audible
Lectures and courses
The university platform does not have to offer captions, and often does not.
- Panopto
- Echo360
- Kaltura
- Canvas
- Moodle
- Blackboard
- Coursera
- Udemy
The honest exceptions
A list this permissive is only useful if it also says where it stops. These are not bugs to be fixed later; they follow from what the app is.
- Your own microphone, ever. It reads what the Mac plays and never what it hears, so nothing you say into a call, a voice memo or a room is captioned. That is a design decision rather than a gap, and it is not configurable.
- Anything not making sound through macOS. Audio on a phone next to you, a physical speakerphone, a Bluetooth device paired to something else. If it does not go through an app on this Mac, it does not exist as far as the tap is concerned.
- Non-speech sound. A voice detector runs ahead of the recogniser, so music, effects and background noise are dropped rather than guessed at. You get speech, and nothing about what else was audible.
- macOS 14.2 and Apple silicon. The whole thing is built on Core Audio process taps, which is where that floor comes from. An Intel Mac cannot run it at all.
Questions
- My app is not on this list. Does it work?
- Almost certainly. The list is illustrative rather than exhaustive, because there is nothing per-app in the code: it captions whatever process is producing audio. If the app plays sound on your Mac and somebody is speaking, it captions. The 14-day refund covers the case where yours turns out to be the exception.
- Do I have to pick the app every time?
- No. By default it listens to whatever your Mac is playing, so it works the moment you turn it on with nothing to configure. You can point it at a single app when you want to, which is worth doing when two things are making noise and you only care about one of them, and that choice sticks until you change it. Either way it captures a chosen app's helper processes too, which is what makes browsers and Electron apps work.
- Does the app I caption know about it?
- No. Nothing is installed into it, nothing joins a call, no bot appears in a participant list and no recording indicator lights up. From the app's point of view you are a person listening.
- Does it work with protected or DRM video?
- It captions the audio those apps play, because it never touches the video stream or the file. Most of those services do ship their own subtitles, so the reason to use this on them is narrower: a title with no track in the language you need, or none at all.
- What about games and screen shares?
- Both work, since both are an app playing audio. A colleague's screen share carries their audio through your meeting app, so it captions as part of the call rather than as a separate thing.
The same overlay, elsewhere
Learning a language
Subtitles in the language being spoken, not translated into yours.
vs Apple Live Captions
macOS has this built in and free. Where it stops being enough.
Zoom
Captions without the host switching anything on.
Microsoft Teams
Captions that do not depend on what your tenant's admin allows.
Google Meet
On-device captions, and no Workspace tier to be on.
Slack huddles
Captions with no workspace app to get approved.
Lectures
Captions live, rather than once the recording is processed.
Podcasts
Captions for the shows that never had a transcript.
vs Granola and notes apps
Complementary, not alternatives. Notes after, captions during.
Whatever it is, it is an app playing audio.
Launch week: $5 instead of $9 until 22 August · 14-day refund
14-day refund, no questions asked
One-time $9, every future update included ·
macOS 14.2 or later · Apple Silicon
Unlimited live captions, for as long as you own the Mac. No minutes to
buy, no account, no subscription.