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Live Captions does not offer your language

Apple ships Live Captions with macOS and, in its own documentation, says the feature is not available in every language, country or region. That one sentence is why the panel is missing on a perfectly good Mac. Here is what decides it, how to check in half a minute, and what the honest options are when the answer is no.

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Three things decide whether you get it

Live Captions is not a single switch that is either on or off. It is gated three separate ways, and only one of them is about the language you want captions in. This is why two people on the same macOS version, with the same Mac, get different answers.

  • The Mac itself. Live Captions needs Apple silicon. On an Intel Mac the row is not hidden or greyed out, it simply does not exist, and no macOS update will add it. If you are on Intel, every other paragraph on this page about Apple's feature is academic, and that unfortunately includes the alternative below: this app is built on an API that only exists on Apple silicon too.
  • The language. Apple's list is much shorter than the list of languages macOS itself is translated into. Your Mac being in Polish, Swedish or Thai tells you nothing about whether Live Captions covers it, and mostly it does not.
  • The country or region. Apple names this as a separate condition from the language, and it is the one that surprises people: the same language can be covered in one region and absent in another, because the two are not the same setting and are not rolled out together.

There is no page anywhere that turns those three into a yes or a no for your particular Mac. The only reliable test is to look, which takes about thirty seconds.

Checking, and what each answer means

  1. 1

    Open System Settings

    From the Apple menu in the top left corner. On macOS 12 and earlier this is System Preferences instead, which is already an answer: Live Captions is not there.

  2. 2

    Accessibility, then Live Captions

    It sits in the Hearing group, below Audio and Captions. Searching the settings window for live captions gets you there faster and, more usefully, finds nothing at all when the feature is not available to you.

  3. 3

    Read which of the three conditions you hit

    No row at all means the Mac, the macOS version, or your language and region. A row you can switch on means you have it. A row that switches on and then downloads means it is working and you are waiting.

If the row is there but the language you need is not in its menu, that is the clearest answer of the three, and the one nothing on your end can change. Changing the Mac's own language does not add a caption language; they are separate lists.

If it is there but not working

What to do about it, cheapest first

Three options, and the first two cost nothing. Work down the list rather than to the bottom of it.

Check again after each macOS update

Apple adds languages and regions between releases, and does it quietly. It costs thirty seconds and it is free, so it is worth doing before anything else on this page.

Use the captions the app already has

Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and YouTube all caption in more languages than Apple does, free, inside their own window. If everything you need captioned happens in one of those, you are done.

Caption the Mac instead of the app

Worth paying for only when the answer above is no: the calls are on an app with nothing built in, or half of it is video and podcasts, or the language is missing everywhere you look.

The sixteen languages this covers

English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Ukrainian and Mandarin. Not a region among them: a language is either in or out, and where you happen to be makes no difference to it.

Pack Size Languages
Latin script 583 MB English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German
Full vocabulary 633 MB Dutch, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Mandarin

One of the two downloads on first run and is then kept. Moving between languages inside a pack is instant; crossing between packs fetches the other one and keeps what you already have, so it happens once. Leave the menu on Multilingual and it works out which language it is hearing, or name the language and it stops guessing, which is the better setting when you already know.

If your language is on neither list

Sixteen languages is not most languages. Polish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Hungarian, Bengali, Tamil and Cantonese are all absent, along with a great many others, and no setting here will add them.

This is not a page trying to talk you into a purchase that will not help. If your language is not one of the sixteen, this app is the wrong answer and you should stop reading here. What tends to work instead: whatever captioning the meeting app itself offers, since Zoom, Teams and Meet each cover languages this does not, and a cloud transcription service for recordings, which is the one category that reaches the long tail of languages, at the cost of sending the audio somewhere.

Translation is a different question

Being understood in a language you do not speak is not the same problem as reading captions in a language you do. Both are here, and they are two separate steps rather than one setting.

Transcription puts words on screen in whatever is being spoken. Translation then turns those words into a language you choose, on the Mac, through Apple's own translator. Any of the sixteen into any other, which is 240 orderings rather than the to-English and from-English pairs a speech model gives you. It needs macOS 15; captioning runs on 14.2, where those rows are simply not in the menu.

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What a language being supported does not promise

A language on the list means the model was trained for it, not that every sentence in it comes out right. Accuracy is best on clear speech and drops on heavy dialect, on two people talking at once, and on fast colloquial delivery down a bad connection. Names, jargon and acronyms are where any recogniser slips, in any language, and no setting fixes those.

Switching between languages mid-sentence is the other honest limit. The detector settles on one language and stays there, so a meeting that keeps crossing between two of them is the case where naming the language by hand beats leaving it on Multilingual.

Language questions

Why is Live Captions missing when my Mac is in a supported language?
Because the language your Mac is set to and the languages Live Captions covers are two different lists, and Apple gates the feature on country or region as well. A Mac running in French in a region Apple has not enabled is a normal way to end up with no Live Captions row at all.
Can I add a language to Live Captions?
No. There is nothing to download and no setting to change; the list is whatever your macOS version offers in your region. Changing the Mac's language or region to force it is not worth doing, because it moves the App Store, Siri and a dozen other things with it.
Which languages does this app caption?
Sixteen: English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Ukrainian and Mandarin. The same sixteen everywhere, with no region condition, and the language detected for you unless you name it.
Does it caption two languages in one conversation?
Not well. Detection settles on one language and stays there, which is the right behaviour for a meeting in one language and the wrong one for a meeting that keeps switching. If you know it will switch, pick the language that carries most of the conversation rather than leaving it on Multilingual.
Do I need a separate download per language?
No, one download per pack. Six languages share the Latin-script pack at 583 MB and the other ten share the full-vocabulary one at 633 MB. Moving inside a pack is instant, and crossing between them happens once and then never again.
Can it translate into a language it cannot caption?
No. Translation runs on the captions, so both ends have to be among the sixteen. It goes from any of them into any other, which is 240 orderings, and it needs macOS 15 because Apple's translator does.
Is it more accurate than Apple's in the languages both cover?
There is no benchmark here that would let anyone answer that honestly, so this page does not claim it. What is measurable is the coverage: sixteen languages with no region condition, against a list Apple describes as not available in every language, country or region.

The same overlay, elsewhere

vs Apple Live Captions

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

Live Captions is not working

Missing, greyed out, or on with nothing appearing. One cause per symptom.

Live translation

Any of the sixteen into any other, on the Mac, while it is being said.

Learning a language

Subtitles in the language being spoken, and translation when you want it.

Deaf and hard of hearing

Captions on every app, without asking anyone to switch them on.

Set-up guide

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

Sixteen languages, and no region to be in.

14-day refund, no questions asked

Buy for $9

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.