How To: Use live captions in a Teams meeting (Desktop)

Tags desktop teams

Teams can detect what’s said in a meeting and present real-time captions.

Note: People can choose not to be identified in captions. For details, see Hide your identity in meeting captions and transcripts.

Use live captions in a Teams meeting

Note: Teams doesn't save captions. If you'd like a transcript of the meeting, turn on transcription. You'll be able to download the transcript after the meeting.

There are a couple ways to get live captions in Teams:

  • From the built-in captioning provided by Teams

  • From a Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) captioner

Use built-in captions

Teams has built-in closed captioning you can turn on from the meeting controls.

Turn captions on and off

  • To use live captions in a meeting, go to your meeting controls and select More options  More options button > Turn on live captions.

    The option to turn live captions on in a meeting's call controls

  • To stop using live captions, go to the meeting controls and select More options More options button  > Turn off live captions.

Change the language of your captions

  1. To the right of the captions, select Captions settings  More options button.

    Button to open captions settings

  2. Select Change spoken language.

    Button to change the spoken language

  3. Select the language spoken during the meeting. (This is the language of your captions and meeting transcript.) 

  4. Select Confirm.

Important: 

  • Make sure the language you select is the language everyone is speaking in the meeting.

  • When you change the spoken language setting, it affects everyone. The captions and transcript language will change for all meeting participants.

You have up to 34 language options for captions:

English (US), English (Canada), English (India), English (UK), English (Australia), English (New Zealand), Arabic (Arab Emirates) (Preview), Arabic (Saudi Arabia) (Preview), Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (Mandarin), Czech (Czechia) (Preview), Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Belgium) (Preview), Dutch (Netherlands), French (Canada), French (France), Finnish (Finland) (Preview), German (Germany), Hebrew (Israel) (Preview), Hindi (India), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea) (Preview), Norwegian (Norway), Polish (Poland) (Preview), Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal) (Preview), Russian (Russia) (Preview), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish (Sweden), Thai (Thailand) (Preview), Turkish (Turkey) (Preview), Vietnamese (Vietnam) (Preview)

Get the most out of your captions

To make sure your live captions are as accurate as possible, try to follow these best practices:

  • Speak clearly, slowly, and directly into the mic. As your distance from the mic increases, captions may become less accurate.

  • Avoid locations with background noise.

  • Avoid having multiple people speak at the same time.

  • Use the highest-quality Teams-certified equipment available to you.

Note: Obscenities are obscured by asterisks. 

FAQ

These questions apply to the built-in live captions provided by Teams. 

Where does Teams process the data it uses to provide live captions?

We process the data in the geographical region where your organization is based.

What data does Teams use to create the captions?

The Microsoft Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology service, which generates Teams meeting captions, may use a meeting's subject, invitation, participant names, attachments, and recent emails of the participants to improve the accuracy of captions.

Who has access to this data?

No one. Microsoft ASR involves no human intervention, and no one can access the meeting audio or any other meeting information at any time. 

Does Teams store any caption data?

No. Caption data is permanently deleted after the meeting is over.

If I don't want Teams to process this data to begin with, can I prevent it?

Yes. Simply don't turn on live captions. Your admin can also disable the feature altogether. Go here for more info about how to do that.

Print Article