How to use your iPhone’s Live Captions to see subtitles for absolutely anything

The iPhone’s Live Captions feature generates subtitles of any media playing on your device or heard by its microphone. Powered by the Neural Engine in Apple’s custom silicon, the ability to convert words from music, videos and real-time conversations into text on the fly is a boon to many users in many situations.

If you’re hard of hearing, for instance, the ability to see instant captions on the screen is a game-changer. Or, if you don’t have headphones when you’re sitting in bed late at night and your partner is asleep — or you’re in any situation where you don’t want to make noise, like on the bus or in an office — you can turn on Live Captions to get subtitles.

The applications are endless and exciting. Here’s how to use Live Captions on your iPhone.

How to use Live Captions on iPhone

Apple’s Live Captions feature turns your iPhone into a stenographer capable of instantly transcribing anything you hear. Whether it’s a podcast, a video in Safari, a FaceTime call or even ambient sound from the world around you, Live Captions can generate real-time subtitles that float over your screen.

Live Captions made a big splash in May 2022 when Apple announced the feature alongside other new accessibility features coming to iOS. In subsequent years, the Live Captions feature expanded to Vision Pro and Apple Watch.

Now, what started as a niche accessibility feature has become a powerful, versatile and universal tool that just keeps getting better. No longer merely a boon for users with hearing loss, real-time captioning can reshape how we interact with voice-driven media on Apple devices.

Here’s how to turn it on, tune it, and make it work for you. 

Table of contents: How to use Live Captions on iPhone

1. Turn on and use Live Captions
2. How accurate is it?
3. Use Live Captions on Apple Watch
4. Add a shortcut to activate Live Captions on your iPhone
5. More accessibility features

Turn on and use Live Captions

To turn on the Live Captions feature on your iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Live Captions (in the Hearing section) and enable Live Captions.

You should immediately see a floating on-screen widget. The menu on the left will let you toggle between captioning from the microphone and your phone’s audio. There’s also a button to minimize the widget and make it full-screen. 

In Appearance, you can customize the text size, color and opacity of the widget. You can choose to Keep Call Captions from a phone call for either one minute or one hour. You can also choose from any of these languages:

• English (United States)
• English (Australia)
• English (Canada)
• English (India)
• English (Singapore)
• English (United Kingdom)
• French (Canada)
• French (France)
• Cantonese (China mainland)
• Cantonese (Hong Kong)
• Chinese (China mainland)
• German (Germany)
• Japanese (Japan)
• Korean (South Korea)
• Spanish (Mexico)
• Spanish (Spain)
• Spanish (United States)

How accurate is it?

Apple has added extensive support for transcriptions to podcasts and lyrics in Apple Music. That makes comparing its accuracy very easy. As you can see from the example above, the Live Captions aren’t as accurate as the podcast transcription. But the live translation is still mostly understandable. 

Live Captions processes the audio as it hears it in real time. As Live Captions hears the end of a sentence, it might work backward and correct the beginning, adding punctuation or replacing sound-alike words, just like using dictation on your iPhone.

That makes the mini on-screen viewer a little hard to follow; you’ll probably want to maximize the window when you can. However, that covers up the app controls for pausing and skipping chapters.

How it works (and sometimes doesn’t) with music lyrics

Can you use Live Captions to parse music lyrics for you? Apple Music’s Live Lyrics aren’t supported in every song — especially if you import your own tracks into Apple Music from live concerts or obscure bands. Live Captions gives you another option for transcribing lyrics.

Unfortunately, this is more of a mixed bag. Songs with straightforward, easy-to-hear lyrics — even with fast and complex ones — fare pretty well. I tested “Ya Got Trouble” from The Music Man and “The Elements” by Tom Lehrer, with Live Captions correctly identifying most of the words. However, when I tested Live Captions with typical rock songs, the tech struggled to transcribe words with much accuracy at all. 

Use Live Captions on Apple Watch

As mentioned, you can use Live Captions on your Apple Watch, too. This proves more convenient if you want transcriptions for in-person conversations.

To set it up, on your iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Live Listen to turn on Remote Control. This lets you enable the Live Captions feature from your Apple Watch.

Then, on your Apple Watch, click the side button to open Control Center. Scroll to the bottom and tap Edit, then tap the + in the upper left corner. Scroll down to tap Accessibility, then tap to add the Hearing button. Move it up the list for easier access if you want, then tap Done. 

After that little bit of setup, you can enable Live Listen Captions on your Apple Watch. Just open Control Center, tap the Hearing button, turn on Live Listen, then tap Live Listen Captions to get subtitles. (Note: When using this feature, it will pipe audio through your iPhone speakers or AirPods, so it’s easier to hear.)

Add a shortcut to activate Live Captions on your iPhone

If you plan to use Live Captions frequently on your iPhone, you should add a button to the Control Center that lets you quickly toggle on the feature. Swipe down from the top-right of the display (or, if you have an iPhone 8 or iPhone SE, the bottom edge) to bring up Control Center.

Tap the + button in the upper right, then tap Add a Control at the bottom of the screen. Scroll down to the Hearing Accessibility section to add a button for Live Captions (and, if you use the Apple Watch feature, add a button for Live Listen, too).

More accessibility features

• Vehicle Motion Cues can reduce motion sickness when traveling. With the feature turned on, dots along the edge of your iPhone screen will animate in sync with the motion of the plane, train or automobile you’re riding in.
• Eye Tracking lets you control your iPhone entirely with your eyes. You can utilize this feature in a pinch if you need to use your phone with soapy hands while doing the dishes.
• Music Haptics adds another dimension to audio: vibration. The feature brings to life a track of rhythmic vibrations and patterns timed to certain Apple Music songs.
• Vocal Shortcuts lets you control your phone by speaking a command out loud. Think “Hey Siri,” but for running your own custom actions from Apple’s Shortcuts app.
• Live Speech plays whatever you type into the iPhone’s keyboard out of the device’s speakers. And Personal Voice lets you train your phone to mimic your own voice.
• Sound Recognition continuously listens for certain sounds — like a fire alarm, a dog barking or glass breaking — and notifies you when your iPhone recognizes them.
• Guided Access locks down your iPhone to a single app before you hand it to a kid or someone else (like a police officer).

This article on Live Captions for iPhone was originally published on July 19, 2022. We updated it with the latest information on September 29, 2022, and January 28, 2026. 

D. Griffin Jones

D. Griffin Jones is a writer, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been a passionate computer enthusiast since 2002, when he got his first PC — but since getting a Mac in 2008, he hasn’t turned back. His skills in graphic and web design, along with video and podcast editing, are self-taught over 20+ years. Griffin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has written several (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His collection of old computers is made up of 40+ desktops, laptops, PDAs and devices, dating back to the early ’80s. He brings all of these creative and technical skills, along with a deep knowledge of Apple history, into his work for Cult of Mac.