Subtitles · Guides

Captions on a Mac, explained properly

Three questions come up more than any others: why Live Captions is not offered in your language, why it is missing or greyed out when it should be there, and how a Mac gets subtitles over something that has none. These pages answer those, including the parts where the answer is that you do not need to buy anything.

Try it free Set-up guide

Start with the guide that matches your problem

Live Captions and your language

Apple says the feature is not available in every language, country or region. What that means on your Mac, and what the sixteen languages here cover.

Live Captions is not working

Missing from System Settings, greyed out, stuck downloading, or on with nothing appearing. One cause per symptom.

Zoom captions on a Mac

No Show Captions button, greyed out, the wrong language, or gone the moment you switch apps. What belongs to the host, and what does not.

Google Meet captions

Missing button, wrong language, translation greyed out, or captions stuck in a tab you are not looking at. One cause per symptom.

Real-time subtitles on a Mac

Every way to caption what your Mac is playing, free ones first, and how capturing system audio actually works since macOS 14.2.

Also worth reading

The guides answer questions about macOS. These four are about this app: how to set it up, what it does and does not keep, what you are buying, and where it stands against the one Apple gives you for nothing.

Set-up guide

Installing, the permission that fails silently, and every setting worth knowing.

vs Apple Live Captions

macOS has this built in and free. Where it stops being enough.

Every alternative, compared

Six ways to get captions on a Mac, and which one fits you.

What the app keeps

Nothing is written to disk, and after the model downloads the only calls left are a version check you can decline and, with a key, a monthly check of it.

Captions on everything, once the reading is done.

Buy for $9

Free for 7 days, then $9 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.