Live captions on Windows 11

Turn live captions on and off

1. Use the keyboard shortcut

   Press Windows key + Ctrl + L.

2. Or use Settings

   Go to Settings > Accessibility > Captions and turn the Live captions toggle on, or off when you are done.

3. Or use quick settings

   Select the battery, network or volume icon on the taskbar, then turn on Live captions. There is a toggle in the quick settings Accessibility flyout too, and Start > All apps > Accessibility > Live captions opens it.

4. Agree to the first-run download

   Microsoft says that the first time, live captions asks for your consent to process voice data on your device and prompts you to download language files.

If you came here to turn live captions off, switch the Live captions toggle off in quick settings or in Settings > Accessibility > Captions. Microsoft's help page lists Windows key + Ctrl + L only as a way to turn captions on, but replies in Microsoft's support forum give the same shortcut for turning them off, so try it first.

Which Windows version and which languages

Microsoft's documentation says live captions is available in Windows 11, version 22H2 and later. It is not listed for Windows 10 or for older Windows 11 versions.

Speech recognition covers 10 languages in 21 regional variants: Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. To switch, select Settings in the live captions window, choose Change language, pick one and select Continue, then download it if prompted. On version 23H2 and earlier the menu item is Caption language instead, and its Add a language option opens the Language & region settings, where you install the language with Enhanced speech recognition selected.

All of this runs on the PC. Microsoft states that audio, voice data and captions never leave your device and are not shared with Microsoft, and that captions work even when you are disconnected from the internet.

Caption your own voice, and move the bar

• To caption yourself or the person in the room with you, select the Settings button in the live captions window, select Preferences, and turn on Include microphone audio.
• Microsoft says the microphone is off again every time live captions starts, and that sound from the PC wins over the microphone. If you and a caller talk at once, you see the caller's words.
• Under Position in the same menu, the caption bar can sit above the screen, below the screen, or overlaid on the screen. Make the window bigger to show more lines.
• Under Preferences, Caption style opens the Captions settings page, where you pick a built-in style or select Edit to make your own. Preferences also has a Filter profanity option.

When live captions is not working

• Check your Windows version first. You need Windows 11, version 22H2 or later.
• If setup says it cannot download the required language files, Microsoft's troubleshooting page points at internet access and the Microsoft Store. Confirm you are online and can download an app from the Store.
• On a work laptop a network administrator may have blocked the Store. Microsoft's fix is to ask your IT administrator to deploy the right Store package, or to download and install that package yourself from the troubleshooting page.
• If you wear a headset and nothing is captioned, Microsoft says live captions follows the default sound output device in Settings > System > Sound. Make the headset the default device.
• If captions lag or drop out, Microsoft suggests closing apps you are not using. Heavy apps, such as ones sharing video, can slow live captions down.
• Only speech is captioned. Microsoft says music and applause are not detected and sung lyrics are not reliable. For a person next to you, turn on Include microphone audio.
• If the words come out garbled, check that the caption language matches the language being spoken. You choose one language at a time.

What it cannot do, and where Fraze fits

Two gaps show up in real use. On a normal PC live captions writes down the language being spoken and nothing else. And Microsoft says generated captions are not stored anywhere, so a call you captioned leaves you no notes.

Fraze fills both. It captions any audio your computer plays, a Zoom, Teams or Meet call in any app or browser, a video, a stream, or your microphone, and shows a translation under each line. Speech recognition and translation both run on your computer, so nothing is uploaded and it works with Wi-Fi off after the first download. Lines land about half a second to a second after a speaker pauses. Transcripts sit in a history list you can export or copy, and a caption window can float over your call. In some places you have to tell people before you transcribe a conversation.

The first 30 minutes are free on every account, no card. After that it is $29.99 once or $2.99 a month, both unlimited. Fraze does not write summaries, label speakers, or open a recording, because it is live only. If you need those, Verli at verli.app is the cloud version from the same company, with more languages and sharing, but the audio goes to the cloud.

When the built-in feature is the better pick

• You only need captions in the language being spoken. Windows does that well, for free, and it is already installed.
• You have a Copilot+ PC and want English or Simplified Chinese captions for foreign audio. Microsoft's documentation says it translates over 40 languages into English and 27 into Simplified Chinese.
• The audio is in Japanese, Korean or Chinese. Windows recognizes those. On Windows, Fraze recognizes 25 European languages and none of those three.
• Your PC is below what Fraze needs: Windows 11 on an x64 processor with four cores, AVX2 support and 8 GB of RAM.

Fraze is for the rest: translation on a normal Windows 11 PC, a target language other than English or Chinese, a spoken language Windows does not list, or a transcript you want to keep.

Questions