Live captions helps everyone, including people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, better understand audio by providing automatic transcription.
Live captions is available in Windows 11, version 22H2 and later. The latest live captions update includes support for multiple languages and changes to some of the menu items. If you don’t have this update yet, note that new Windows 11 features are released gradually.
For more information on the new features in Windows 11, version 22H2, and how to get the update, see What's new in recent Windows updates. Not sure which version of Windows you have? See: Find Windows version.
In this article
Live captions integrates with the Windows desktop, so you can read captions while working in other apps. Captions can be provided for audio even when disconnected from the internet. You can personalize how captions are displayed, and you can include microphone audio to make in-person conversations easier.
Make captions easier to read
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Select the Settings button in the live captions window.
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Select Preferences.
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Select Caption style. The Accessibility settings for Captions opens.
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Under Caption style, do one of the following:
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Select a built-in style from the dropdown menu. Use the Default built-in style to have captions displayed with colors appropriate to your device’s dark or light mode setting in Settings > Personalization > Colors > Choose your mode.
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Select the Edit button to create a custom style that works best for you.
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Use your microphone
To caption your own speech:
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Select the Settings button in the live captions window.
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Select Preferences and turn on the Include microphone audio option.
Any audio captured by your microphone will be captioned, provided that no other audio on your device is being captioned. For example, if you use live captions to caption an online meeting with another person, if you both speak over each other, you will only see the captions for the other person while the other person is speaking.
Note: When you next turn on live captions, this option will be turned off.
To check your device’s microphone configuration, see Settings > System > Sound and review the Input options.
Add and use other languages
To add other languages:
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Select the Settings button in the live captions window.
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Select Caption language.
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Select Add a language. The Language & region settings window opens.
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In Language & region settings, go to Preferred languages, and then select Add a language.
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In Choose a language to install, browse or search for a language with support for Speech recognition, and then select Next.
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In Install language features, select the features you want to use, while ensuring Enhanced speech recognition is selected, and then select Install.
When the installation of the enhanced speech recognition feature has completed for the language you selected, the language appears in live captions' Caption language menu.
To use other languages:
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Select the Settings button in the live captions window.
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Select Caption language.
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Select the language you want to use.
When the new language is selected, live captions will display that it’s ready to caption in the new language.
Get the most out of live captions
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To mask profanity, go to the Settings menu, select Preferences, and turn on the Filter profanity option.
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To improve captioning accuracy when using the microphone, make sure to minimize background noise in your environment and speak directly into the microphone.
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To ensure minimal delay in captions or if you notice that captions are not appearing, try closing unused apps to maximize performance.
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Resource-intensive apps (for example, apps that share video) might impact the real-time behavior of live captions, leading to delays in captions, or even dropped captions. If this happens, consider limiting some app functionality while depending on live captions (for example, turn off any background effects or other special effects applied to shared video).
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Frequently asked questions
Live captions supports speech recognition in:
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Chinese (Simplified, China)
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Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR)
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Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan)
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Danish
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English (Australia)
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English (Canada)
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English (India)
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English (Ireland)
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English (New Zealand)
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English (United Kingdom)
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English (United States)
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French (Canada)
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French (France)
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German (Germany)
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Italian (Italy)
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Japanese
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Korean
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Portuguese (Brazil)
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Portuguese (Portugal)
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Spanish (Mexico)
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Spanish (Spain)
Only speech detected in audio will be captioned. Audible events such as applause or music will not be detected. Lyrics sung in music will not be reliably detected.
All processing of audio and generation of captions from detected voice data occurs on-device. Audio, voice data, and captions never leave your device and are not shared to the cloud or with Microsoft. For more information, review the Microsoft privacy statement.
Live captions pays attention to the default sound output device configured in Settings > System > Sound. You might need to change your default device for audio to be picked up by live captions.
The microphone is always turned off by default when live captions starts up, so that only the audio you intend will be captioned.
Navigate to Settings > Privacy & security > Microphone > Let apps access your microphone > Let desktop apps access your microphone.
Sound audio will be prioritized over microphone audio. For example, if you are in a virtual meeting where a remote meeting participant is speaking and you speak over each other, the captions for the remote meeting participant will be shown instead of your captions.
Navigate to Settings > Apps > Installed apps, and then search for Speech Pack. You get a list of all installed language files. Select Uninstall from the menu for the language file you want to uninstall.