Get help with Private Captions.

The fastest way to get a bug fixed is from inside the app: open the Support tab and choose Email a Bug Report. It pre-fills your message with your macOS version, selected speech engine and model, and current settings, so there's no back-and-forth just to reproduce the problem.

Reporting from outside the app? Include what you were doing, what you expected, and what happened instead — screenshots help.

Why does Private Captions ask for Screen & System Audio Recording access?

That permission is how Private Captions reads the audio already playing on your Mac — it's the only way macOS allows an app to caption another app's sound. This covers every audio source except Microphone: Safari, Chrome, VLC, FaceTime, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, iPhone Mirroring calls, and "All system audio." Private Captions only reads the audio stream; it never records or saves video, and audio is discarded after transcription unless you enable the optional Save Audio setting.

Why does Private Captions ask for Microphone access?

Only if you pick the Microphone audio source, to caption speech in the room instead of another app's audio — useful for in-person conversations rather than movies or calls. Like every other source, mic audio is transcribed on-device and never uploaded. Audio is discarded after transcription unless you enable the optional Save Audio setting, which saves recordings locally alongside History.

Does my audio or my captions get uploaded anywhere?

No. Transcription and translation both run on your Mac. See the Privacy Policy for the full detail.

Captions aren't appearing — what should I check first?

• Confirm Screen & System Audio Recording (or Microphone, if that's your selected source) is enabled for Private Captions in System Settings → Privacy & Security, then fully quit and relaunch Private Captions — a permission grant only takes effect on the next launch.
• Make sure the app you want captioned is actually playing audio, and that the correct source is selected in the Audio Source picker.
• If you picked an app-specific source (Safari, Chrome, VLC, FaceTime, Zoom, Teams, iPhone Mirroring), open that app and start playback or the call first, then hit Refresh next to the source picker.

The Whisper model download seems stuck or slow.

The Small/Medium Whisper models are several hundred megabytes and only download once — after that, Private Captions loads them from disk with no network involved. If a download genuinely won't complete, check your network connection and try again; it resumes rather than starting over.

Which languages are supported?

19 spoken/subtitle languages are available today, covering the most common pairs for movies and shows. If a language you need is missing, say so in a feedback email — it's the best signal for what to add next.

Private Captions is actively developed. If something's missing or could work better, send feedback directly — every message is read.