Live captions can make a Mac much easier to use when spoken audio is hard to follow. That might be because you are hard of hearing, sitting in a noisy room, listening to a fast speaker, or trying to follow a meeting in a second language.
NotchLive is built for that everyday need: private live captions for the audio already playing on your Mac. It works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, YouTube, podcasts, lectures, and microphone speech without inviting a meeting bot into the conversation.
Important: NotchLive is not a medical device or a replacement for professional hearing support. It is a practical captioning tool that can make Mac audio easier to read and follow.
Many apps include their own captions, but they are usually limited to one place. Zoom captions only help inside Zoom. Video captions only help when the video has captions available. Meeting bots can create transcripts, but they add another participant and often send the conversation to a cloud service.
A Mac-level captioning layer is different. If the audio plays through your Mac, the same caption tool can help you read it. That matters for mixed workdays where you move between calls, videos, courses, podcasts, and quick voice conversations.
NotchLive can listen to system audio, your microphone, or both together. That makes it useful across common hearing accessibility situations:
For many people, the best accessibility tool is the one that does not make a scene. NotchLive does not join your meeting, announce itself, or appear in the participant list. It captions the audio on your Mac locally.
After the initial model download, Whisper AI runs on your device. That means audio is not uploaded to a captioning service for transcription. If you only need personal captions to follow what is being said, that local approach is simpler and more private than a meeting bot.
Traditional caption tools often use a floating window. That works, but it can cover slides, chat, or the person speaking. NotchLive places captions near the top center of your screen, close to where your eyes already go during calls.
On MacBooks with a notch, captions sit in the notch area. On Macs without a notch, NotchLive uses a top-center caption bar. For screen sharing or larger text, Pro users can also open Caption Display, a separate readable caption window.
| Need | Built-in app captions | Meeting bot | NotchLive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Works across Mac apps | Usually no | Meeting apps only | Yes |
| No extra meeting participant | Yes | No | Yes |
| On-device transcription | Varies | Usually cloud | Yes |
| Personal live captions | Sometimes | Heavy for this | Good fit |
| Translation and transcripts | Limited | Often yes | Pro |
NotchLive keeps live captions free. You can download the app, choose your audio source, download a Whisper model, and start captioning Mac audio without a subscription.
Pro is for people who want the extended workflow: real-time translation, saved session history, transcript export, and Voice Notes with Raw and AI-cleaned views. The accessibility value starts with free captions; Pro is there when captions turn into notes or transcripts you want to keep.
macOS 14+ · Live captions free forever · Translation, saved transcripts, and Voice Notes require Pro.