Caption anything
Pick any running app — a browser, a video player, a conference call — or your microphone. Caption both at once, color-coded by speaker.
macOS 26 · Apple Silicon
Live captions for anything on your Mac
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.
What it does
Six ways CaptionBar stays out of your way
Live, on-device translation
A translation appears beneath each caption as it lands, powered entirely by Apple's on-device translation engine — no cloud, no account.
Every word saved automatically
Each session writes to a clean Markdown file the moment it starts. There's no export step to forget — timestamps, speaker labels, and bookmarks land as they happen.
Speaker-colored captions
Microphone and app audio are two independent streams, so speakers are told apart for free — no voice-print modeling required.
Auto-detected bookmarks
Phrases like "action item," "TODO," or "decision" are flagged inline as they're spoken, in English and Chinese.
Designed to disappear
Lives in your menu bar — no Dock icon, no window clutter. Press ⌥Space to summon it anywhere; controls only appear on hover.
File-first, not cloud-first
The file is the product
There's no export button, because there's nothing to export. From the first spoken word, CaptionBar writes a Markdown transcript straight to your ~/Transcripts folder — and, if you turn on audio recording, a matching 16kHz recording for each source. Your save folder is the history view: browse it in Finder, Spotlight, or Obsidian.
# 2026-07-14 0930 Zoom
*Generated July 14, 2026 at 9:30:05 AM*
[09:31:15] [local] We're behind on the container migration — what's the status?
[09:31:32] [app] The deployment went smoothly, no major issues on UAT.
[bookmark] trigger: "action item"Same folder, same basename
- 2026-07-14 0930 Zoom.md
- 2026-07-14 0930 Zoom.mic.m4a
- 2026-07-14 0930 Zoom.app.m4a
Three screens, nothing else
No main window. No Dock icon. No onboarding.
01
Press ⌥ Space
A global hotkey opens the source picker instantly, from any app — no need to hunt for a menu-bar icon first.
02
Pick a source
Microphone up top, then every app that's currently making sound. First click doubles as the permission request — no separate onboarding screen.
03
Captions appear, saving starts
The floating caption bar shows up immediately. The Markdown file — and the audio file, if enabled — are already being written.
Privacy
Private, by architecture
Nothing leaves your Mac
Speech recognition and translation run on Apple's own on-device frameworks. There is no server in the loop.
No account, ever
No sign-up, no login, no tracking. Open the app and it works.
You own the files
Transcripts and recordings are plain files on your disk. Delete the app and your history stays exactly where you put it.
Try CaptionBar
Coming soon to the App Store.
Download on the App StoremacOS 26+ · Apple Silicon · ~15MB of storage per hour of optional audio