Choosing a Live Caption App for Mac: What Each One Captions

Pick by what you're listening to

• A video, podcast or call in any app, and you only need to read along: macOS Live Captions, if your Mac has Apple silicon.
• Something you can play in Chrome, including on an Intel Mac where Apple's Live Captions isn't available: try Chrome Live Caption.
• A Zoom, Teams or Google Meet call: that app's own captions, plus its transcript if you need the words afterward.
• Meetings you want kept as a transcript to go back to: Otter.
• A recording you already have: MacWhisper.
• Captions of the Mac's audio or the room in a window that stays on top, saved afterward: Vocena.
• Speech in another language: Chrome's Live Translate for the browser, or a meeting app's translated captions if the meeting's Zoom plan, Teams license or Workspace edition includes them. For audio from other apps, MacWhisper Pro lists live captions with translation.

Six ways to get captions on a Mac

macOS Live Captions

Apple's Live Captions guide for Mac describes a real-time transcription of audio in any app, such as FaceTime or Podcasts, and of conversations around you, with the audio processed on the Mac. It works only on Macs with Apple silicon, and not in every language, country or region.

On October 5, 2026, the Accessibility: Live Captions list on Apple's macOS feature availability page, which covers macOS Golden Gate, included Cantonese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English is listed for Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, and Spanish for Mexico, Spain and the United States. Japanese and Korean have no region attached; Cantonese, French, German and Mandarin are listed for named regions.

To turn it on, choose Apple menu → System Settings → Accessibility → Live Captions. The first time, the Mac downloads language data, so do it while you're online. By default it captions sound from all apps. To caption the people in the room instead, click the Live Captions icon in the menu bar and choose Microphone. You turn the feature off on the same settings page, and keyboard shortcuts for switching it on or off or changing the audio source are under System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Accessibility.

Apple's guide describes no way to translate the captions or to save them. Apple also warns that accuracy may vary and that Live Captions shouldn't be relied on in high-risk or emergency situations. For another captioning app, our guide to what Ava's free plan covers goes through its limits and cost.

If the setting is missing or the window stays empty, our Live Captions troubleshooting guide goes through the checks. For a podcast, see whether the episode has a transcript in Apple Podcasts first; our Mac podcast captions guide covers both.

Chrome Live Caption

Google's page on captions and translations in Chrome says Live Caption processes the audio and captions on your computer, never stores them and never sends them off the device, so there's nothing to keep afterward. It only covers Chrome, so a call in the Zoom app or an episode in Apple Podcasts needs one of the other tools. Google's Mac steps list no Apple silicon requirement, so on an Intel Mac, where Apple's Live Captions isn't available, try Chrome for anything you play in the browser.

Turn it on under More → Settings → Accessibility → Live Caption. The captions appear in a bubble you can drag. For a language other than English, select Add languages next to Manage languages; Chrome downloads the language pack, and you then choose it under Preferred caption language. Google's page doesn't list which languages that includes on a Mac, so look through the Add languages list before you count on one.

Live Translate is in the same Accessibility settings. It sends the captions to Google to be translated into the language you pick under Translate to, so with it on, the captions leave your Mac.

Captions inside Zoom, Teams and Google Meet

Zoom's guide to viewing captions has you click Show captions in the meeting controls, or find it under More. Each line is labeled with the speaker's display name. The host can switch captions off for the meeting. If the host has limited who can turn them on, you'll see Request captions instead of Show captions. Zoom lists its caption languages on its automated captions page. If you need captions as an accommodation, see how to request a trained live captioner.

Zoom's FAQ on caption and transcript changes says captions can't be saved or downloaded since its May 2026 update; the saved record is the meeting transcript, which stays off until a host or admin turns it on. Translated captions need Business Plus, one of the Enterprise plans Zoom lists, or the Translated Captions add-on, according to Zoom's translated captions requirements. Our Zoom translated captions guide covers who has to pay.

In Teams, select More actions → Language and speech → Show live captions. Microsoft's live captions page says Teams doesn't save captions and points you to transcription. Live translated captions come with Teams Premium or Microsoft Copilot licenses, and if the organizer has one, everyone in the meeting can use them. Our guide to saving Teams captions walks through the transcript.

In Google Meet, click Turn on captions at the bottom of the window. Google's Meet captions page says they're on only for you, and scrolling back shows only the parts where you were in the meeting with captions on. That page describes no way to save captions. Translated captions in Meet are limited to some Workspace editions, such as Business Standard and Enterprise Plus, and the same page says that if you record a meeting, you can select Record captions to embed the captions in the clip. Meet transcripts, also tied to certain editions, are saved in the organizer's Google Drive and come in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

Otter

Otter turns meetings, and anything else it records, into a transcript saved in your account. On October 5, 2026, its pricing page listed live transcription on the free Basic plan, and transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. Basic gives you 300 transcription minutes a month, up to 30 minutes per conversation, and shows only your 25 most recent conversations; our Otter free plan guide covers the other Basic limits. For text in another language, Otter's supported languages page has you translate a conversation with Otter Chat.

On a Mac, the Otter desktop app needs macOS 12.3 or later, an Otter account and two permissions: Microphone, and Screen & System Audio Recording. The second lets Otter pick up meeting participants or a video playing on the Mac, even while you wear headphones. It can notice a Zoom, Teams, browser or Slack huddle call and remind you to record, or start recording on its own. Setup is in our guide to using Otter on a Mac.

The transcript appears in Otter's own window as it's written. Otter's article on transcribing a YouTube video suggests putting the video and the Otter transcript side by side. If you need captions with no internet connection, our offline guide explains what Otter does without one.

MacWhisper

MacWhisper starts from files. Its home page and price list lead with transcribing any file you drop in, using local models. The free version handles files and microphone recordings in 100 languages and exports TXT, SRT and VTT. Pro is a one-time license that adds speaker recognition, translation of transcripts and automatic meeting recording.

The live captions are in Pro. MacWhisper's Gumroad purchase page lists real-time captions with live translation, from the microphone or system audio, and real-time meeting transcription with speaker recognition on supported models. It also lists macOS 14.0 or later. The home page's price list doesn't mention the live captions, and MacWhisper's meeting recording guide still describes stopping a recording and then transcribing it, so if live captions are the reason you'd buy Pro, test them on your own audio as soon as you install it. The version sold on macwhisper.com, not the Mac App Store one, also has dictation, which types what you say into any text field. For models, Free versus Pro and recording app audio, see our MacWhisper guide.

Vocena

Vocena is for reading along with the Mac's system audio, or the people near its microphone, in a floating window that stays over your other apps, and keeping the text afterward. It needs macOS 15.5 or later. Live captions are free, with no time limit. Translation is paid, and Apple's on-device translation in the Mac app needs macOS 26 or later. Each session is saved in the library, and you can export the text as TXT, or as SRT with timestamps if you recorded the audio. Which languages it recognizes depends on the speech model you choose and on macOS. Speech recognition runs on the Mac unless you pick the cloud model, which comes with the subscription and uploads the audio.

There's also an app for iPhone and iPad (iOS or iPadOS 26 or later). Captioning other apps' audio on an iPhone needs a physical iPhone running iOS 27.