If you’re like most people, you probably use your iPhone to take pictures and videos. But what if you want to add captions to those videos and photos? Well, there’s a way to do that without any extra software or hardware. All you need is an iPhone and a live captioning app. Here’s how to do it:

  1. First, find an app that offers live captioning for iPhones. Some of the best options include captions for Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger.
  2. Once you’ve found an app that offers live captioning for your phone, open it up and sign in with your account information. Then, select the video or photo you want to captioned with a live annotation.
  3. To start captioning the video or photo, just touch the annotation icon at the bottom of the screen and select your desired language (English or Spanish). Once you’ve selected your language, touch the green “start” button at the top of the annotation screen. The app will start automatically adding text to each annotation in that language.
  4. To stop adding text to an annotation, just touch the “stop” button at the top of the annotation screen. The app will stop automatically adding text to annotations when they’re done being created (or when they expire).

Introduced in iOS 16, “Live Captions” enable you to see captions for nearly anything that plays audio on your iPhone. That includes videos, music, podcasts, and even phone calls and FaceTime calls.

First, open the Settings app on your iPhone.

Next, go to the “Accessibility” section.

Now select “Live Captions.”

The first thing to do is simply toggle on “Live Captions” at the top of the screen.

Alternatively, you can choose to only use Live Captions in certain apps. On that same page, you can toggle on “Live Captions in FaceTime” and “Live Captions in RTT” (real-time text).

Now that we’ve turned Live Captions on, let’s customize how it appears on the screen. Select “Appearance” to proceed.

The “Appearance” page has a few things you can customize. You have the option to tweak the text type, size, and color, as well as the background color of the text box. The transparency of the Live Captions button can also be adjusted.

Once you’re done customizing the appearance, we can go ahead and try it out! Simply start playing something that has audio, such as a YouTube video. A text box will appear, like the one shown below. You can drag it around the screen with your finger.

Arrow: Minimizes the text box into a small floating bubble. Pause: Pauses the transcription. Microphone: Switches to transcribing live audio through the device’s microphone. Full screen: Expands the transcription box to full screen.

When audio isn’t being transcribed—or you’ve collapsed the box—you’ll see a little floating bubble that can be dragged around the screen.

That’s all there is to Live Captions! This is a very powerful feature that can be invaluable to many people. Google Pixel phones have a similar feature with the same name. Accessibility is a big deal, and the iPhone has you covered.

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