Live captions on a Mac.

Turn Live Captions on or off

1. Open the setting

   Choose Apple menu, then System Settings. Click Accessibility in the sidebar, then Live Captions. You may have to scroll down.

2. Flip the switch

   Apple's guide says the first time you turn it on, language data is downloaded to your Mac, so you need to be online for that step.

3. Choose what gets captioned

   You can switch between the audio coming out of your Mac and the sound the microphone picks up, from the caption window or the menu bar icon.

4. Pause, hide or stop it

   The window hides itself when there is no audio, and Keep Onscreen pins it. To stop captioning without turning the feature off, use the pause button or Stop Live Captions in the menu bar. Accessibility Shortcuts can toggle the whole feature.

Font, text size and colors sit in the same panel, and the window resizes by dragging its edges.

Which Macs and which languages

Apple's note is short and firm: Live Captions is available only on Mac computers with Apple silicon, and not in all languages, countries or regions. An Intel Mac gets nothing.

Apple's macOS Feature Availability page lists 18 language and region options today, which come down to eight languages: Cantonese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Most are tied to set regions, so French covers only Canada and France. Apple changes the list, so check the page before you count on a language.

Apple warns that the accuracy varies and should not be relied on in high-risk or emergency situations.

Why it does not translate

Live Captions transcribes. Spanish audio gives you Spanish text. Apple lists no translation option for it.

Live Translation does, but on a Mac it lives inside three apps. Apple's Mac User Guide says it translates texts in Messages, shows translated captions in FaceTime and gives spoken translations for calls in the Phone app. It needs Apple Intelligence, which Apple says is not available in all languages or regions. The macOS Tahoe 26 edition of the guide says Live Translation uses Apple-built models that run entirely on device.

Apple's own pages do not agree on the call languages today. The macOS Feature Availability page lists Live Translation in Phone and FaceTime for English (UK and US), French (France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (Spain), and the FaceTime guide gives the same languages for one-to-one calls. The Phone guide for Mac lists a shorter set, without Italian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Check Apple's pages before you count on a language.

On a Mac, a Zoom or Teams call, a video or a stream is outside what Live Translation reaches. Live Captions can hear all of them, and will not translate any of them.

How Fraze captions and translates on a Mac

1. Pick the audio

   Everything your Mac plays, one app on its own, or the microphone. One app alone helps when you want the call captioned but not the music next to it.

2. Pick two languages

   Fraze transcribes 25 European languages, and more on macOS 26 and later, including Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Translation covers about 50 languages to or from English. Other pairs go through English.

3. Read along

   Lines appear about half a second to a second after a speaker pauses, with the translation under each one. A small caption window can float over your call, and the main window can show the original, the translation, or both.

Both steps run on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, and after the first download of the language files it works with Wi-Fi off. Transcripts stay in a history list on your computer, and custom vocabulary helps with names and terms. In some places you have to tell people before you transcribe a conversation.

When Apple's own feature is the better pick

• You only need captions in the language being spoken. Live Captions does that for free and is already there.
• Your calls are FaceTime or Phone calls in a language Apple lists. Live Translation handles those inside the app.
• You want Type to Speak, which reads what you type out loud in a conversation. Fraze has nothing like it.

Fraze is for the rest: a language Apple does not list, a translation under every line, or audio from any app. It is live only, so it cannot take a recording you already have, and it does no summaries or speaker labels. For those, or a browser version, Verli at verli.app is the cloud sibling from the same company, where audio goes to a server.

The first 30 minutes are free on every account, with no card. After that it is $29.99 once or $2.99 a month, both unlimited, because the work happens on your Mac and there is no per-minute meter. A free Fraze account is required. It carries the plan and never sees your audio or transcripts.

Questions