Subtitles

Subtitles · Live captions for podcasts

Live captions for podcasts,
including the ones with no transcript.

A podcast is the thing you listen to while doing something else, which is exactly when a sentence gets away from you. Subtitles captions whatever your Mac is playing, in any player, on an overlay that sits above the window you are actually working in.

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One-time $9, every future update included · macOS 14.2 or later · Apple Silicon
Unlimited captions, for as long as you like. No minutes to buy, no account, no subscription.

You are never looking at the player

Nobody sits and watches a podcast. It plays while you are writing code, going through email, moving tickets around, doing the work that does not need all of your head. That is the whole appeal of the format, and it is also why a word goes past you every few minutes: not because you cannot hear it, but because your attention was on the other window when it arrived.

A transcript in the podcast app does not help with that, because the podcast app is not the window you are in. This overlay is above every window and lets clicks through, so the last thing said is on screen wherever you happen to be working, and you never touch it.

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14-day refund, no questions asked.

Why not the player's own transcript?

Apple Podcasts generates transcripts automatically, in twelve languages, and they are good. Spotify has them for some shows. If that covers what you listen to, in the app you listen in, it is free and you should use it. Here is where it runs out.

  • Coverage is per app and per show. Apple's transcripts are inside Apple Podcasts, Spotify's are inside Spotify, and both depend on the episode being eligible and the language being supported. An indie feed, an old back catalogue episode, a browser tab, a link somebody dropped in Slack: nothing at all.
  • A transcript is a document, a caption is a line. One is for searching an episode afterwards, and Apple's is genuinely better at that than anything here, because this keeps nothing. The other is for the sentence that just went past while your hands were busy.
  • None of it is kept, anywhere. The episode is not recorded, no transcript is written to disk, and nothing is uploaded to be captioned somewhere else. The line you just read was never a file, which is the same reason there is no history to scroll back through.
  • It was never really about podcasts. The same overlay runs over an audiobook, a recorded talk, a YouTube interview and a voice note, because it captions your Mac rather than a service.

What it captions while you work

Whichever player you use

Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, a browser tab. It captures the audio an app produces, and for browsers and Electron apps the helper processes that go with it, so the choice of player is not a compatibility question.

The shows nobody transcribed

Two people in a room with one microphone between them, a back catalogue from 2014, a feed with eleven listeners. These are the episodes that have nothing, and they are usually the ones where the audio is hardest.

Nine languages, detected

The default model works out what it is hearing rather than asking you to declare it, which matters on a show that switches language for a guest and switches back.

Podcast questions

Does it work with Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Overcast?
Any of them, and a browser tab too. It captures the audio an app produces rather than integrating with a service, so the player you use makes no difference to it.
Does it work on episodes that have no transcript?
That is most of what it is for. Apple generates transcripts for eligible episodes inside Apple Podcasts, and Spotify has them for some shows, but an indie feed, an old back catalogue episode or a talk someone linked to has nothing. This does not need the show to have prepared anything.
Can I keep the transcript afterwards?
No. Nothing is written to disk here, ever. If searching an episode after the fact is what you want, Apple Podcasts' transcript is free, and better at that job than this would be.
Which languages does it caption?
Nine, with the language detected for you rather than declared. Worth knowing that Apple's own transcripts cover twelve languages inside Apple Podcasts, so on a supported show in a supported language their coverage is wider. This works everywhere else.
Does it work on audiobooks, YouTube interviews and recorded talks?
Yes. It never knew it was captioning a podcast in the first place. Anything your Mac plays gets the same treatment.

The same overlay, elsewhere

Zoom

Captions that do not wait for the host to switch anything on.

Microsoft Teams

Captions that do not depend on what your tenant’s admin allows.

Google Meet

On-device captions, whatever Workspace tier you are on.

Slack huddles

Captions with no workspace app to get approved.

vs Apple Live Captions

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

Lectures

Captions live, rather than once the recording is processed.

vs Granola and notes apps

Complementary, not alternatives. Notes after, captions during.

Read the line you just missed.

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.