macOS · Ecamm · OBS · Meld · Camo Studio · Restream

A transparent web overlay that drops into any streaming app with a browser source.

Live captions your audience can actually read.

Live Show Captions puts clean, colour-coded captions on your stream — a different colour for every speaker, so viewers always know who's talking. Drop in one transparent overlay URL and you're on air.

7-day free trial · Just your email, no card · Runs locally, nothing leaves your Mac

Live preview · colour-coded per speaker
Privacy first — everything runs on your Mac.
Your audio, captions and voice prints are processed on-device and never leave your machine. No accounts, no cloud, no uploads.

On screen, every voice looks the same.

  • Captions land as one undifferentiated block — the words change, but nothing on screen changes with them
  • In an interview, viewers work out who just spoke from context, always a beat behind the conversation
  • Nothing ties a line to a person: no name, no colour, no side of the screen
  • The guest you booked and the host asking the questions read as one continuous voice

"Who's talking right now?"

Live Show Captions answers it visually. Each speaker gets their own colour, name and side of the screen — so a two-person interview reads like a conversation, not a wall of grey text.

Half your audience is watching muted.

Scrolling past in a feed, most people never turn the sound up — the captions are your show. When they all look identical, everything you did to make it feel like a real conversation stops at the speakers.

Colour-coded captions, built for live.

Everything runs from a native menu-bar app and a clean control panel. No accounts, no cloud, nothing leaves your Mac.

A colour per speaker
Host in one colour, guests in another — with names, photos and left/right sides, like a chat thread. The one thing generic auto-captions can't do: make it obvious who's speaking.
Eight caption styles
Chat card, speech bubble, subtitle, Netflix, lower third, neon glow, Apple-style Liquid Glass — and new Word-Pop, the TikTok-style look where the spoken word pops in colour. Pick the size, colour and hold time to match your brand.
Captures your guest too
Pull your remote guest's audio straight out of Zoom, Ecamm or Chrome — no cabling or virtual-audio setup — so both sides of the conversation get captioned, in their own colour.
The magic bit · Voice Print

The colours switch by themselves.

Record a few seconds from each speaker once and the app builds a voice print — a fingerprint of how that person sounds. From then on it hears who's talking and switches the colour, name and side of the screen on its own, mid-conversation. No hotkeys, no clicking between speakers, no second pair of hands in the studio.

New · Live translation

Speak in your language. Caption in theirs.

Pick one of nearly 40 languages and your captions appear on the overlay already translated, live, while you keep speaking naturally. Like everything else in the app, translation runs entirely on your Mac: your audience in Lisbon, Berlin or São Paulo reads along and nothing ever touches the cloud.

The whole show, from one clean panel.

Name your speakers, record a voice print, style your captions and grab your overlay URL — it's all in one native control panel.

The redesigned Live Show Captions control panel with speakers, caption styles and live previews
The control panel · speakers, previews & overlays
Speakers, colours and voice prints
Colour-coded speakers, sides & voice prints

Menu bar to on-air in under a minute.

Transcription runs natively on your Mac. Drop one transparent overlay URL into your streaming app and you're live.

01
Open Live Show Captions from the menu bar
Click Start Captions
02
Name your speakers, pick their colours
Add photos and record a voice print so each speaker is identified by voice
03
Copy the overlay URL
One local URL — no account needed
04
Paste it into a web / browser source
Ecamm Live, OBS, Camo Studio, Restream & more — transparent, sized however you like
Eight styles, one app
Eight caption looks in the control panel — Chat card, Bubble, Subtitle, Netflix, Lower third, Neon glow, Word-Pop and Glass

Chat card · Bubble · Subtitle · Netflix · Lower third · Neon glow · Word-Pop · Liquid Glass — pick size, colour and hold time to match your brand.

Side by side.

Platform auto-captions
One flat colour for everyone. Fine for a solo talking head — useless for telling two speakers apart in an interview.
Transcription apps
Built to give you a file or notes after the recording. They don't put a live, styled graphic on screen for your audience.
Browser caption tools
Live, but generic-looking, single-colour, and awkward to brand or match to your other overlays.
Live Show Captions
Live, colour-coded per speaker, eight brandable styles, and trigger words that fire graphics on cue. Tells voices apart from a short voice print, captures remote guests, translates your show live into nearly 40 languages, and drops into any tool as a transparent overlay. Everything — audio, captions, voice prints and graphics — stays on your Mac and is never sent to the cloud.

Built for anyone hosting a live conversation.

This is for you if
  • You host a podcast, interview show or live stream with guests
  • You want captions that look like part of your brand, not an afterthought
  • You want viewers to instantly see who's speaking
✗ You don't need this if
  • You only need a transcript or subtitle file after recording — that's a different category of tool

It keeps getting better.

Updates are free for every owner and arrive right inside the app. Here's what's new.

New
Live translated captions
Speak in one language, caption in another. Nearly 40 languages, translated live and entirely on your Mac, so international viewers can follow every word.
New
Shows: saved setups
Save a whole setup as a show: caption look, speaker names, colours and photos, trigger words and graphics. Switch shows in one click, or carry them to another Mac.
New
A redesigned control panel
The panel in the screenshots above: Speakers, Trigger words, Audio and Shows sit one tab apart, with your live previews always in view.
New
Holo card trigger effect
A holographic foil finish for trigger graphics and text: rainbow sheen, moving gloss and film grain, straight off a collector's card. That makes 18 effects.

Where it's heading.

Live Show Captions is actively developed — here's what's coming next. Buy at the founder price and you help shape it.

In testing
Voice-activated scene switching
Say the word and the show changes: trigger words that switch scenes and fire overlays in Ecamm Live, OBS and Meld Studio.
Exploring
Style & graphic packs
Drop-in visual packs: fresh caption looks, animations and trigger-word graphics to match any brand, show or season.
Exploring
Transcripts & SRT export
When the show ends, keep the words: a clean transcript for show notes, or an .srt subtitle file for the replay.
Exploring
Sound packs & stingers
Trigger words that fire sounds as well as graphics: stingers, applause and airhorns, on cue and on brand.
Exploring
A connected studio
Add Voice Visualizer (mic-reactive overlays) and Live Captions to the same app as plug-ins — or run each standalone. One overlay system, your choice.
Exploring
Live Show Captions for Windows
Streaming from a PC? A Windows version is on the table. If that's you, get in touch and help it up the list.

Frequently asked.

How do I add live captions to a live show or stream on a Mac?

Run Live Show Captions from your menu bar, click Start Captions, then paste its overlay URL into a browser source in your streaming app. The captions appear over your video as a transparent layer — no cloud service, no extra hardware, and they work on every platform you stream to.

Does it work with OBS, Ecamm Live, Camo Studio and Restream?

Yes. Anything that accepts a browser or web source can display the overlay — Ecamm Live, OBS Studio, Meld, Camo Studio, Restream Studio and most other streaming tools. You paste one local URL and size and position it however you like.

Can it caption my remote guests as well as me?

Yes. It pulls your guests' audio straight from Zoom, Ecamm or Chrome — no virtual audio cables — and captions up to four guests, each with their own colour, name and side of the screen.

How does it know who's speaking?

You record a few seconds of each speaker once and the app builds a voice print. From then on it recognises each voice and switches the colour, name and screen side automatically mid-conversation — no hotkeys and no clicking between speakers.

Can it translate my captions into another language?

Yes. Pick a target language and your captions appear translated live, while you speak in your own. Nearly 40 languages are built in, and translation runs on your Mac like everything else, so nothing is sent to the cloud. Translated captions land line by line rather than word by word, because whole sentences translate far better than fragments.

Is my audio sent to the cloud?

No. Transcription and voice recognition run entirely on your Mac. Audio, captions and voice prints never leave your machine, and there's no account to create.

What Mac do I need?

An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS. Live Show Captions is a native menu-bar app — not a browser tool or a cloud service.

How much does Live Show Captions cost?

$49, once. That's the founder price for the first 50 buyers, after which it goes to $69. There's no subscription and no renewal — you buy the licence and it's yours to keep, on up to two Macs. Point releases are free.

Is there a free trial?

Yes — seven days of the whole app, with nothing held back. You start it with your email address, and no card is needed. The seven days start the first time you actually caption something, not the moment you install it, so you can set everything up at your own pace and still get a full week of real shows.

How is this different from Apple Live Captions?

Apple Live Captions (and notch caption apps) draw captions on your own screen, for you to read — they can't appear on a stream. Live Show Captions renders captions for your audience: a styled, colour-coded overlay inside Ecamm, OBS, Camo Studio or Restream that every viewer sees, with each speaker identified by voice.

macOS · Apple Silicon
Get the App

Put your show's captions on screen.

Buy it once and it's yours. No subscription, no renewal, no licence that quietly expires the week you need it. $49 is the founder price for the first 50 buyers — after that it goes to $69.

Founder price · first 50 buyers
One payment · yours to keep
$69$49 once
Founder price — rises to $69 after the first 50

Live Show Captions

Live Show Captions puts clean, colour-coded live captions on your Mac live stream — a different colour for every speaker, so viewers always know who is talking. A native macOS app with a transparent overlay for Ecamm, OBS and Restream. $49 one-time, no subscription.

$49.00
Buy Now
One-time purchase · 2 Macs · instant download

Not sure yet? Take the 7-day free trial — the whole app, no card, and the clock only starts the first time you caption a show.

macOS
Apple Silicon
No subscription
v1.12.1

Built by Neil Farrimond · v1.12.1 · September 2026

The small print

© 2026 Neil Farrimond. All rights reserved. Live Show Captions, its user interface and caption designs are protected by copyright. The app is licensed, not sold — use is governed by the licence below.

Licence terms (EULA) — the short version

Your licence. A perpetual personal licence to use the app on up to two Macs you own or control, for your own shows. It does not expire and there is nothing to renew.

Free trial. Seven days of the full app, with no payment details taken and nothing to cancel. The seven days begin the first time you start captioning, not when you install. When the trial ends the app stops captioning until a licence is entered; everything you set up stays on your Mac. If you gave an email address when you started the trial, it is used only to send you two messages about the trial itself.

One payment. $49 at the founder price (rising to $69 once the first 50 licences are sold) — paid once, not recurring. There is no subscription, no auto-renewal and no charge after purchase. Point releases and fixes are included for free; a future major version may be offered as a paid upgrade at a discount for existing owners, and your current version keeps working either way. Your settings and voice prints stay on your Mac throughout. Purchases can be withdrawn within 14 days (EU right of withdrawal).

What you can't do. Share, resell or publish licence keys; copy or redistribute the app; reproduce its interface, caption designs or documentation in a competing product; reverse engineer it except where EU law expressly permits; or tamper with licensing.

Privacy. Transcription runs on your Mac. Your audio, captions and voice prints never leave your machine. No analytics, no tracking. Purchases are processed by Stripe.

Honesty about captions. Live transcription is imperfect by nature. Captions aren't guaranteed to be accurate and the app isn't a substitute for a dedicated accessibility/compliance solution. If it doesn't work on your supported Mac and we can't fix it, we'll refund your purchase in full.

The legal frame. Provided "as is"; liability limited to what you've paid in the last 12 months; governed by Portuguese and EU law — without affecting your statutory consumer rights. Questions: via the contact details on this site.

© 2026 Neil Farrimond · All rights reserved ● ON AIR — Live from the Creator Cafe