How to Enable or Disable Live Captions in Windows 11
Live Captions in Windows 11 turns any spoken audio from videos, podcasts, and phone calls into on-screen text instantly. This built-in accessibility tool displays words in a small box at the top or bottom of your screen so you never miss a word.
You can turn on the feature anytime by pressing the Win+Ctrl+L shortcut on your keyboard. It works offline for English media and helps you follow along when you are in a loud room or watching videos without sound.
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
Live captions can be enabled using the accessibility menu (often called a flyout) in the Quick Settings menu or the Settings app. The first time you use this, your computer will download a small speech file to process audio locally.
Using Quick Settings
1. Click the Network/Volume/Battery icon in the bottom right corner of your taskbar . This brings up the Quick Settings menu.
2. Click the Accessibility icon (it looks like a person).
3. Toggle the Live captions switch to On.
Using the Settings App
1. Press Win+I to open the Settings app.
2. Click Accessibility on the left sidebar.
3. Scroll down to the Hearing section and click Captions.
4. Click Live captions and flip the switch to On.
Customization and Personalization
Customizing caption appearance helps with readability. Inside the Captions menu, click Caption style to adjust text size, color, and background opacity. Filtering profanity or including microphone audio works well when captioning personal voice during calls.
Data Privacy and Processing
Live captions process audio right on the hardware. Audio data never leaves the machine for cloud processing, keeping conversations entirely private and secure.
Troubleshooting and FAQs
Why isn't my headset audio being captured?
Does live captions support multiple languages?
Live captions in Windows 11 currently only support English.
Currently, live captions in Windows 11 primarily support US English. Microsoft expands language support over time, but standard builds remain limited for now. Checking the Language settings in the Captions menu reveals whether additional packs are available for download.
Summary
Pressing Windows key + Ctrl + L remains the fastest way to toggle live captions on or off.
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About the Author
Richard
Tech Writer, IT Professional
Richard, a writer for Geek Rewind, is a tech enthusiast who loves breaking down complex IT topics into simple, easy-to-understand ideas. With years of hands-on experience in system administration and enterprise IT operations, he’s developed a knack for offering practical tips and solutions. Richard aims to make technology more accessible and actionable. He's deeply committed to the Geek Rewind community, always ready to answer questions and engage in discussions.
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.