How to Enable or Disable Live Captions in Windows 11
Live Captions in Windows 11 turns spoken audio from videos, podcasts, and calls into on-screen text as it plays. This built-in accessibility tool shows the words in a small box at the top or bottom of your screen, so you can follow along even if you miss what was said.
You can turn the feature on at any time by pressing the Win+Ctrl+L shortcut on your keyboard. It works offline for English media. That helps when you are in a loud room, or watching a video with the sound off.
Live Captions is part of Windows 11 version 22H2 and later. If you cannot find it anywhere in the steps below, run Windows Update and install the latest updates first. Both Home and Pro editions include it.
Enable Live Captions by pressing Win+Ctrl+L, or by navigating to Settings Accessibility Captions You can also use the Accessibility icon in Quick Settings. To disable, use the same shortcut or toggle the switch off in Settings.
How to Enable Live Captions
You can turn on live captions from the accessibility flyout in Quick Settings, or from the Settings app. Both do the same thing, so use whichever you find faster.
The first time you turn captions on, Windows asks to download speech files. These let your computer process audio locally. The download is small, but you need an internet connection for that one time. Captions will not start until it finishes.
Using Quick Settings
- Click the Network/Volume/Battery icon in the bottom right corner of your taskbar . The Quick Settings panel opens.
- Click the Accessibility icon (it looks like a person). A small flyout opens with a list of accessibility toggles. If you do not see the icon, click the pencil (Edit quick settings) button, choose Add, and pick Accessibility from the list.
- Switch the Live captions toggle to On.
- If Windows asks to download speech files, accept the prompt and wait for it to finish. A caption bar then appears on your screen, and any speech that plays will show up as text.
To turn captions off again, open the same flyout and switch Live captions back to Off.
Using the Settings App
- Press Win+I to open the Settings app.
- Click Accessibility on the left sidebar.
- Scroll down to the Hearing section and click Captions.
- Click Live captions and flip the switch to On.
- If prompted, let Windows download the speech files. When it finishes, the caption bar appears.
To undo this, return to the same page and flip the switch to Off. No restart is needed in either direction.
Customization and Personalization
You can change how captions look. Open Caption style inside the Captions menu to adjust the text size, color, and background opacity. Windows 11 also offers ready-made styles there. Pick one and the preview updates, so you can see the result before you leave the page.
You can also filter profanity or include microphone audio, which captions your own voice during calls. These options are in the preferences menu on the caption bar itself. Click the gear icon on the bar to reach them. The same menu lets you move the bar to the top or bottom of the screen, or let it float.
A bar docked at the top of the screen takes up room, and Windows shrinks your open windows to fit. If that gets in the way, move it to the bottom or set it to float.
Data Privacy and Processing
Live captions process audio on your own hardware. The audio does not leave your computer for cloud processing, so conversations stay private. The one exception is the first-time download of the speech files, which is only the language model and not your audio.
Troubleshooting and FAQs
Why isn't my headset audio being captured?
Summary
Pressing Windows key + Ctrl + L is still the fastest way to turn live captions on or off. If nothing happens when you press it, check that you are on a Windows 11 build that includes Live Captions. Also check that the speech files finished downloading.
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About the Author
Richard
Tech Writer, IT Professional
Richard is a writer at Geek Rewind who turns complex IT tasks into clear, step-by-step guides. He draws on years of hands-on experience in system administration and enterprise IT operations, focusing on Windows, Linux and WordPress: the problems people actually run into, and the fixes that work. His server and WordPress guides come from systems he runs himself. Richard builds and maintains the platform behind Geek Rewind, from its Ubuntu servers and Nginx configuration to its custom WordPress plugins. Many new tutorials start with readers' questions, and he's always glad to answer them in the comments.
On my windows 11 pro I do not have the option to turn off “live captions” and the key combination does not work either.
facing same problem !
have you got any solution?
Turn Off Live Captions using Registry Editor
1. Press the Win + R keys to open Run program.
2. Type regedit to open Registry Editor.
3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Accessibility by Pasting this string in the address bar
4. Double click in the key Configuration
5. Remove livecaptions from the Value data
6. Press OK
7. Reload registry (any of: reboot, logoff then login, killing Explorer.exe process)
Disable Chrome Live Caption
Launch Google Chrome browser.
Click on the More. for options menu.
Select the Settings menu from the list.
Scroll to the Advanced section, and click to expand.
Under the Accessibility section, and turn OFF the Live Caption toggle button.
You literally just saved me SO MUCH frustration THANK YOU.
This worked for me! Thank you!
its very annoying and i am not able to turn this off eigther
I turned it off, and it’s still off, but live captions still comes up every time a video starts playing. It’s infuriating!
Turning it off in Windows didn’t work for me and I was getting so frustrated! Turned out I needed to disable it in Chrome browser settings under Accessibility. Looks like Peggy Staley had the same solution.