Subtitles

Subtitles · Live captions for Slack huddles

Live captions for Slack huddles,
with nothing to install in Slack.

Subtitles captions the audio your Mac is playing, so a huddle is just the Slack window making sound. There is no workspace app to get approved, nothing joins the call, and the overlay stays on top while you carry on working in front of it.

14-day refund, no questions asked

Buy for $9 See how it works

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.

Why not Slack's own captions?

Slack has live captions in huddles, on every plan including the free one, and turning them on takes a click. Three things still get in the way, and the first is the nature of a huddle.

  • A huddle is the thing you have while doing something else. You are reading the thread, editing the file, looking at the screen someone is sharing. Slack's captions are in the Slack window, behind whatever you moved to. This overlay sits above every window and takes no clicks, so it is still there when Slack is not.
  • Notes are a paid tier. Slack's AI huddle notes arrive on Business+ and Enterprise Grid. This keeps no transcript at all, which is a different answer rather than a cheaper one: nothing is written to disk, on any plan, ever.
  • It never talks to Slack, or to anything else. Having no workspace app is only half of it. The huddle is never recorded, nothing is written to disk, and once the model has downloaded there is no network call left for it to make. What you read was on screen and then it was gone.
  • They stop at the edge of Slack. Somebody links a video halfway through the huddle, or you go back to the recording afterwards, or it is a podcast at lunch. The same overlay captions all of it, because it was never captioning Slack in the first place. It was captioning your Mac.

Nothing to get approved

The usual way to get text out of a huddle is a Slack app or a notetaker bot, and both hit the same wall before they do anything useful: someone has to approve them. In most workspaces that means an admin, a request, and a wait, at the end of which a third party has been given standing access to a workspace that is not only yours.

Subtitles is not a Slack app. It has no OAuth scopes, no workspace connection and no presence in the huddle, because it does not know Slack exists. It reads the sound your Mac is already making.

Buy for $9

14-day refund, no questions asked.

What it captions in a huddle

The other people

It taps what your Mac plays, so you read whoever else is in the huddle. Your microphone is never opened, which is why the one voice it will never caption is yours.

Slack, helpers and all

Slack is an Electron app, so its audio does not come from the process named Slack. Point the menu bar at it and the helper processes come with it, which is the difference between captions and silence.

Even when you can hear fine

Huddles start mid-thought and move fast, people talk over each other, and somebody jumps in with the important part while you are still reading the thread that caused it. The last line said stays on screen, so losing the thread costs you a glance instead of a rewind.

Slack questions

Do I need my Slack admin to approve anything?
No. There is no Slack app to install, no OAuth scope to grant and no connection to your workspace at all. It captions the audio your Mac is playing, which is not something Slack administers.
Does anyone in the huddle know I am using it?
No. Nothing joins the huddle: no bot in the participant strip, no app in the workspace and no notification, because the app never talks to Slack. The overlay is on your screen and nowhere else.
Does it work with huddles in a browser?
Yes. It captures an app and every helper process that app spawns, so a huddle in a browser tab captions the same way the desktop app does.
Can I keep a transcript of the huddle?
No. Slack's own huddle notes need Business+ or Enterprise Grid; this keeps nothing at all, which is a different answer rather than a cheaper one. Nothing is written to disk here, ever.
Does it caption what I say?
No. It only ever hears what your Mac plays, never your microphone, so you read the other people in the huddle and not yourself.

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.

vs Apple Live Captions

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

Podcasts

Captions for the shows that never had a transcript.

Lectures

Captions live, rather than once the recording is processed.

vs Granola and notes apps

Complementary, not alternatives. Notes after, captions during.

Read the huddle, without joining anything to it.

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.