CaptionBar: Live Captions
Transcribe & Translate Any App
Only for Mac
Free
Mac
Turn any sound on your Mac into live, translated captions.
CaptionBar floats a lyrics-style caption bar over your screen and transcribes what you hear — a meeting, a lecture, a video, a call — as it happens, entirely on your Mac. If the audio isn't in your language, a live translation appears right under each line.
CAPTION ANYTHING
• App audio: pick any app — a browser, a video player, a conference call — and caption its sound
• Microphone: capture the room, an interview, or your own dictation
• Both at once: mic and app audio together, color-coded by speaker
LIVE TRANSLATION
• On-device translation appears beneath each caption as it lands
• Powered by Apple's translation engine — no cloud, no account
• Captions in 10+ languages, including English, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional, Cantonese), Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese
EVERY WORD SAVED, AS IT HAPPENS
• Each session is written to a clean Markdown file in real time — there is no export step to forget
• Optional audio recording saved alongside the transcript, one file per source
• Timestamps, speaker labels, and auto-detected action items and decisions
DESIGNED TO DISAPPEAR
• Lives in your menu bar — no Dock icon, no window clutter
• Press Option–Space to summon it anywhere
• Captions gently fade as they age; controls appear only on hover
• Native macOS design, light and dark
PRIVATE BY ARCHITECTURE
• Speech recognition and translation run 100% on your Mac, on Apple's own frameworks
• Your audio never leaves your machine
• No account, no sign-up, no tracking
MADE FOR
• Watching videos or streams in a language you're still learning
• Following fast meetings, lectures, and interviews
• Deaf and hard-of-hearing users who want captions for any Mac audio
• Anyone who wants automatic, searchable notes of what they heard
REQUIREMENTS
• macOS 26 or later on Apple Silicon
• Language packs download once, then work fully offline
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
- add fast mode for voice to text
The developer, 小朋 蒯, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- 小朋 蒯
- Size
- 2.9 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 26.0 or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 26.0 or later.
- Mac
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
9+
- 9+
- Copyright
- © @ 2024 ChampaKyle