Captions in a Discord call,
without a bot in the server

Nothing to invite, nothing to approve

A transcription bot has to be added by someone with permission, sits in the channel as a member, and captures everyone's voice in order to do its job. In a friend group that is a conversation to have. In a public community it is a moderation decision, and in a work server it is a procurement one.

Subtitles is not a Discord app. It has no token, no scopes, no presence and no idea Discord exists. It captions the audio coming out of your Mac, which nobody administers, and it captions it only on your screen.

• Discord is an Electron app. Its audio does not come from the process wearing its name, it comes from helper processes. Pointing the menu bar at Discord takes those with it, which is the difference between captions and silence.
• Game audio and voices, together or apart. Leave it on all system audio and everything gets captioned. Narrow it to Discord and you read the people while the game keeps making noise on its own.
• It never opens your microphone. You read everyone else in the channel and never yourself, which is a deliberate line rather than a missing feature. It also means nothing you say is ever processed.
• Nothing is recorded. No transcript, no file, nothing written to disk at any point. What you read was on screen and then it was gone, which is the answer a lot of communities need before anything else.

What it captions in a server

Discord questions

Do I need a server admin to allow anything?

No. There is no Discord app to add, no bot to invite, no token and no permissions to grant. It captions the audio your Mac is playing, which is not something a server administers.

Will anyone in the call know?

No. Nothing joins the channel, nothing shows in the member list and no notification is sent, because the app never talks to Discord. The overlay is on your screen and nowhere else.

Does it record the call?

No. Nothing is written to disk at any point, so there is no transcript afterwards even for you. Hold ⌥ to bring the last few captions back while they are still on screen, and that is the whole of it.

Does it caption what I say?

No. Your microphone is never opened. It only ever hears what your Mac plays, so you read the other people in the channel and never yourself.

Does it work with Discord in a browser?

Yes. It captures an app and every helper process that app spawns, so Discord in a browser tab captions the same way the desktop app does. That is the same mechanism that makes the desktop app work at all, since it is Electron.

Can I caption the call without captioning the game?

Yes. The menu lists what is playing right now; pick Discord and everything else keeps making noise uncaptioned. That choice sticks until you change it.

Will it show over a full-screen game?

Over windowed and borderless full screen, yes. A game that takes the display exclusively on its own Space is the exception, and switching it to borderless is the fix. Most Mac games offer that mode.