Live captions

Live captions are a setting of the show. While they are on, speech in the program sound is turned into text on this Mac and shown as a ticker along the bottom of the program: one line that builds on the right and moves to the left.

Who sees them

Captions are part of the program picture. Everyone who sees the program sees them: the room, the call and the recording.

Live, and a little behind

The text runs about one to two seconds behind the words, and it cannot be corrected. If it goes wrong on air, turn captions off at once with Captions in the toolbar or Switcher › Captions on Program (⇧⌘C).

On this Mac

Speech is recognised by macOS on this Mac. Nothing is sent anywhere, no account is needed, and captions count none of your Spelvin actions.

Language

You choose the language in Settings › This Show › Captions. The list holds the speech languages installed on this Mac; the language is not detected automatically. A show set to a language this Mac lacks shows it as (Not Installed).

Look

Size is Small, Medium or Large. Background sets how dark the bar behind the text is; at 0 % there is no bar and the text gets a dark edge instead. Both are saved with the show.

The wording file

Speech recognition does not know your names and terms. A wording file teaches them: a Markdown file that lists each term as it should be written, followed by the ways it may be heard. The captions then write “Northwind” where they heard “north wind”. Changes to the file are picked up while the app runs. See File formats.

The toolbar button

The Captions button in the toolbar says what the captions are doing: Captions Off, Captions Starting, Captions On while they listen, or Captions Stopped when the speech engine cannot listen. Rest the pointer on it for the reason. The Status row in Settings says the same.

Read more

• Turn captions on
• Teach names with a wording file