Live captions for Google Meet, on your Mac rather than Google’s servers.
Subtitles captions the audio your Mac is playing, so a Meet call is just a browser tab making sound. No Workspace tier decides what you get, and the overlay stays on top when you leave the tab.
Until 31 October: $9 instead of $19 · 14-day refund
The empty state is the part people see first, so it needs the most work.Let us look at the onboarding flow next.I would drop the tooltip and put the hint in the field itself.Two steps instead of four, and the second one is optional.
Google ChromeFileEditView14:32
✓Multilingual · 560 ms · RTF 0.31
✓Pause Subtitles⌥⌘S
✓Check for Updates…
✓Check for Updates Automatically
✓Listen ToHold ⌥ for Don't Listen To
✓Don't Listen ToNever captioned while listening to all system audio
✓All system audioTry
✓MacBook Pro MicrophoneTry
✓Language / Models
✓Multilingual633 MB · default · detects the language itself
✓Parakeet EOU · 160 ms215 MB · no punctuation · ⚠︎ RTF 0.6–2.2 here
✓Parakeet Unified · punctuated595 MB · punctuated · 2.08 s · Nemotron is faster
✓Latin-script pack · 583 MB
✓Español
✓Français
✓Italiano
✓Português
✓Deutsch
✓Full vocabulary · 633 MB
✓Nederlands
✓Türkçe
✓Русский
✓العربية
✓हिन्दी
✓日本語
✓한국어
✓Tiếng Việt
✓Українська
✓中文
✓Translate To
✓Off
✓Show Both LanguagesTry
✓English
✓Español
✓Français
✓Italiano
✓Português
✓Deutsch
✓Nederlands
✓Türkçe
✓Русский
✓العربية
✓हिन्दी
✓日本語
✓한국어
✓Tiếng Việt
✓Українська
✓中文
✓Translation Timing
✓Live, Then Settletail is dimmed until it settles · recommended
✓Always Liveno lag · anything on screen may change
✓Speak Translation
✓Off
✓When VoiceOver Is On
✓Always
Voice
✓Best Installed Voice
✓VoiceOver Voice
Speed
✓Slow
✓Normal
✓Fast
✓Very Fast
✓Lower the Original While Speaking
✓Stop or Repeat Speech⌥⌘.
✓Text Size and AlignmentTry
✓SmallTry
✓MediumTry
✓LargeTry
✓HugeTry
✓Start AlignmentTry
✓Center AlignmentTry
✓Show Source App NameTry
✓OffTry
✓Name TabTry
✓Header RowTry
✓Show Overlay In Screen Share / Capture
✓Fade Away Under PointerTry
✓Recent Boxes On ⌥Try
✓Color ThemeTry
✓AutoTry
✓LightTry
✓DarkTry
✓Audio BorealisTry
✓OffTry
✓RainbowTry
✓Northern LightsTry
✓AutumnTry
✓Monochrome HazeTry
✓StrongTry
✓MediumTry
✓SubtleTry
✓Reset Overlay PositionTry
✓Licensed
✓Settings…⌘,
✓Check Audio Permission…
✓Show Welcome Screen Again
✓About Subtitles
✓Quit Subtitles⌘Q
Design review · MeetNotes · Docs+
meet.google.com/abc-defg-hij
AOAmaraYTYukiTRTomás
100%
Design reviewAction itemsNotes
Google Chrome
Change tabs and the captions stay: they belong to the audio the tab plays, not to the tab. No extension, no bot, no Workspace tier.
Hold ⇧ and drag the captions to move them, as you would in the app.
Hold ⌥ to rewind, and the last few boxes stack back up.
Click in the menu bar: items marked Try all work in this demo.
What it captions in a Meet tab
The other people
It taps what your Mac plays, so you read everyone else on the call.
A sales call, an interview, a webinar in a tab: whoever is speaking
on the other end is what you read. Your microphone stays closed
unless you choose it in Listen To, so nothing you say on the call is
transcribed, and nothing is sent anywhere either way.
The tab, or all of Chrome
It captions whatever your Mac plays, so a Meet tab is covered without
configuring anything. Narrow it to the browser when you want only
that, and it captures the helper processes the browser spawns, which
is where tab audio actually lives, and why aiming at the main process
alone would hear nothing.
Even when you can hear fine
Meet calls are often the ones with people outside your company on
them: unfamiliar accents, someone on a phone in a corridor, a
second language on one side or the other. Sixteen languages, detected
for you, and a half-heard word readable rather than reconstructed.
Why not Meet's own captions?
Meet's captions are free for everyone, which is more than most video
platforms manage. Two things still get in the way, and one of them is the
tab itself. If yours are missing, in the wrong language or grayed out,
this guide
takes each symptom in turn.
They are in the tab, and the tab is not always in front.
Meet runs in a browser. Switch to your notes or another tab and its
captions are not behind a window; they are not being drawn at all.
This overlay is a separate always-on-top layer, and click-through, so
it stays where you put it.
Google does the transcribing. Meet's captions are produced on Google's side. Subtitles runs the model on the Neural Engine in your Mac and opens no socket at all: the call is read, captioned and forgotten, with nothing recorded, nothing uploaded and nothing written to disk unless you save a transcript. That is a different kind of promise from a policy page, because there is no policy involved.
Translated captions are a paid Workspace tier. Live
translation lands on Business Standard and above; free Google accounts
and Workspace Individual do not have it. Subtitles translates on any
account at all, including no account: any of its sixteen languages into
any of the other fifteen, on your own Mac.
They stop when the call does. The same captions carry
on over the recording afterwards, the YouTube version, the podcast at
lunch: anything your Mac plays, in or out of a meeting.
The captions are in the tab. Meet is a browser tab,
and the doc, the sheet or the deck being discussed is another one.
Switch to it and the captions are on the tab you left. An overlay above
every window does not mind which tab is in front, or whether a browser
is in front at all.
No bot on the invitation
The usual way to get text out of a meeting is a notetaker bot: it joins
with a calendar invitation, it shows up in the participant list, and
everyone can see the call is being captured.
Subtitles never signs in to Google, never asks for calendar access and
never appears on anyone's screen but yours. It does not know Meet exists;
it reads the sound your Mac is already making.
Free for 7 days, then $19 once, 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.
Google Meet questions
Do I need a Google Workspace plan?
No. Subtitles has nothing to do with your Google account: it captions the audio your Mac plays, on a free Gmail account or an Enterprise tenant alike.
Does it translate the call?
Yes, since 1.3. Pick a language in Translate To and the call arrives in it, translated on your Mac rather than on anyone's server. Meet's own translated captions need Workspace Business Standard or above; this needs macOS 15 and nothing else. Left off, it captions what is said in the language it was said in.
Do the captions stay visible when I switch tabs?
Yes. That is the main reason to use it over Meet's own: the overlay is a separate always-on-top layer, so leaving the Meet tab does not take the captions with it.
Does anything go to Google?
No. After the one-time model download the only requests left are a
daily check for a newer version, which you can decline, and a
monthly check of your license key once you have one. The audio never
leaves your Mac.
Does it work with Meet in Safari, Chrome or Arc?
Any of them. It captures an app and every helper process it spawns, which is what all three are underneath.
TryOne-time $9 until 31 October, then $19Private, offline captions for anything your Mac plays: meetings and calls, videos, podcasts and lectures, rendered as an always-on-top overlay that stays visible while you switch apps. Transcription runs locally on the Apple Neural Engine; no audio leaves the machine.Live captions for meetings and video callsAlways-on-top overlay that stays put while you switch appsPrivate, offline, on-device transcription: no upload, no account, no telemetrySixteen languages with automatic language detectionSkips music and non-speech audioOptional new caption box on speaker changeLive translation between any two of the sixteen, on deviceSearchPlayPauseRestart