Manual

The app manual

The LiveCaption desktop app on Windows and macOS: captions, translation, interpreting, recordings and settings.

1. What LiveCaption is, and which mode suits whom

   What LiveCaption does – captions, translation, interpreting –, what each mode needs, and which one to choose in which situation.

2. System requirements and installation

   What LiveCaption needs on Windows and macOS, how it gets onto the machine, and what to check before the first start.

3. First start and connecting to the servers

   The steps of the first start: the servers' addresses and keys on the Servers tab, the check, choosing the mode and the first captions.

4. The caption window and the toolbar

   The parts of the caption window, the toolbar's four sections and their settings panels, and how to move, resize and hide the window.

5. Status dots, tray and menu bar menu, hotkeys

   What the status dots and warning marks mean, what the tray and menu bar menu holds, and how to set the hotkeys.

6. Caption sources and the speech language

   Where the captions come from (the Whisper server or the system's Live Captions), what the app listens to, and how to set the speech language.

7. Segmentation and accuracy

   How the app splits speech into sentences, what the segmentation modes and profiles mean, and which values improve caption accuracy.

8. Translation

   Translating the captions into another language: turning the translator on, the language pair, sentence-by-sentence translation and the translation band.

9. Interpreting and your own voice sample

   Turning simultaneous interpreting on, the three modes of the interpreter's voice, downloading the built-in voice and recording your own voice sample.

10. In calls: virtual cable, outgoing direction

    Interpreting in calls: the Usage tab's modes, the virtual audio cable (VB-CABLE, BlackHole), setting up the call app and the outgoing direction.

11. Recordings and export

    Recording the sessions, and the Recordings window: finding, copying and exporting earlier captions as text, SRT or CSV.

12. Appearance and screen sharing

    The caption band's background, fonts and colours, the order of the bands, and how the caption window behaves in screen sharing and with click-through.

13. Session, Advanced, System, About

    The other tabs of the settings window: the recognition model and segmentation, the measured advanced values, the resolved environment, and About.

14. Language, logs and saving settings

    The interface and log language, where to find the logs, how to save, undo and reset the settings, and how to take them to another machine.

15. The built-in help

    Where the help is inside the app – the tabs' Help panel and the Help tab –, how to open it, and what each tab's help covers.

16. Troubleshooting

    The most common problems in the app by symptom – no captions, delays, missing translation, a silent interpreter, macOS permissions – and what to do.

17. Appendix: the file clients

    Batch subtitling of audio and video files and folders into SRT, and translating subtitles, markdown documents and resource files from the command line.