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.
Launch week: $5 instead of $9 until 22 August · 14-day refund
14-day refund, no questions asked
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.
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 there is no network call left.
Captions on everything, once the reading is done.
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.