Live Captions for
Streaming Events

MirrorCaption gives you live captions and translation for any streaming event in 50+ selectable languages — all from a second browser tab in desktop Chrome or Edge, without the organizer doing a thing.

It is minute four of the keynote. The presenter switched to Mandarin. The organizer's auto-captions never loaded. You have two options: piece it together from slides and body language, or open MirrorCaption in the tab next to the stream and read along in real time.

This page covers the viewer-side use case: getting live captions and translation for streams and webinars you are watching, independently of what the host has or hasn't configured.

Why Most Live Streaming Events Still Don't Have Captions in Your Language

If you have attended a multilingual webinar or international conference stream, you have run into at least one of these:

• The organizer configured English captions only
• The platform requires the host to enable live captions, and they forgot
• Live translated captions are locked behind an enterprise tier the organizer doesn't subscribe to
• The captioning service supports only certain language pairs, and yours isn't one of them
• Captions were working — and then they broke mid-session

Enterprise captioning platforms such as Wordly, SyncWords, and Verbit are powerful tools. But they are tools for event producers. They require the organizer to purchase, configure, and integrate a captioning service before the event. If that setup didn't happen, you, the viewer, have no fallback within the platform itself.

That gap is what MirrorCaption fills for individual attendees. You don't need the organizer's help. You don't need to install anything. You open a browser tab, share the stream's audio, and read along. The organizer's setup — or lack of it — doesn't change what you see.

How MirrorCaption Works for Live Streaming Events

MirrorCaption starts from a browser tab. Meet mode captures audio from a tab you designate — in this case, the tab playing your live stream or webinar — and streams it to the speech-to-text service for real-time processing. No desktop client or extension is installed, though workplace browser and screen-capture policies still apply.

What You Can Do During a Live Streaming Event

Beyond reading captions, MirrorCaption gives you a set of tools that matter during long broadcasts.

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  Follow both languages at once. The side-by-side view shows the original transcript next to the translation. When a presenter says something idiomatic in French — "ca va sans dire" — you see the French source and the English translation together. You are not forced to choose one language over the other.
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  Open word lookup and context tools. Tap a word in the transcript to look it up, inspect it in context, or save it for later. The original and translated segments remain visible side by side for comparison.
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  Search the live transcript. If you missed something said ten minutes ago, search the running transcript by keyword and jump directly to that moment in the text.
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  Export the full transcript when the event ends. Download as Markdown or plain text. Useful for notes, summaries, or sharing with colleagues who weren't present.
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  Follow an AI summary when enabled. With OpenAI-enhanced summaries enabled, MirrorCaption builds an incremental summary as the event progresses so you can catch up without rereading the entire transcript.
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  Save vocabulary from the session. Any word or phrase in the transcript can be saved to your vocabulary builder — turning a live webinar into a language study session.

Who Uses Live Captions for Streaming Events

Illustrative scenario: the online learner

Imagine Priya, an engineering master's student in London whose first language is Tamil. Her core modules are delivered in English — manageable, but exhausting over a three-hour seminar stream. She opens MirrorCaption in a second tab, shares the seminar platform tab, and sets the source to English and target to Tamil. She reads the captions as a backup layer when her concentration fades, and saves technical terms she wants to look up later to her vocabulary builder. By the end of the semester, she has built a personal glossary of over 200 terms from her actual coursework — not a textbook.

Illustrative scenario, not a documented customer case.

Illustrative scenario: the accessibility backup

Imagine Diego is deaf and relies on live captions at every event he attends virtually. At a major industry conference, the organizer's captioning service stops during the opening keynote. While the event team works on the shared feed, Diego opens MirrorCaption, shares the stream tab, and restores a personal caption view without waiting for the organizer's system to recover.

Illustrative scenario, not a documented customer case.

Viewer-Side vs. Producer-Side Live Captioning

Most search results for "live captions for streaming events" describe tools for event organizers — services that add captions to the broadcast output visible to all attendees. MirrorCaption is different. It is a personal captioning layer for the individual viewer. Here is the structural difference:

When organizer-side captioning is the right choice: If you are the event organizer and need captions visible to every attendee inside the broadcast — burned in, overlaid, or delivered via a platform integration — tools like Wordly, SyncWords, and Verbit are built for that workflow.

When MirrorCaption is the right choice: You are an individual viewer who needs captions or translation on your own screen, independently. You cannot wait for the organizer to fix their setup. You need it now, in your language, under your control.

Pricing

Premium is not unlimited transcription. It includes 200 hours of hosted credit up front. Voice Packs are sold separately and top up your hours when needed. Premium customers always get the lowest available Voice Pack rate on the platform. For more on how hours work, see the pricing page.

The free hour is enough to test the workflow on a real event. For regular webinar attendees, compare the Annual and Premium credit bundles against how many hours of streamed content you expect to caption.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the event organizer know I'm using MirrorCaption?

MirrorCaption does not join the meeting or stream as a participant and does not send an in-meeting notification to the host or attendees. Your browser still shows its normal local sharing indicator while tab audio is being captured.

Which streaming platforms does this work with?

Meet mode works with any audio playing in a browser tab on desktop Chrome or Microsoft Edge. This includes Zoom webinars opened in a browser, YouTube Live, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams browser sessions, Webex, and Crowdcast. If the event plays in a Chrome or Edge tab, MirrorCaption can capture the audio. Proprietary desktop apps (Zoom desktop client, Teams desktop app, etc.) are outside the browser and not captured by Meet mode.

What languages are supported for live captions and translation?

MirrorCaption supports 50+ selectable languages, including Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Polish, and more. Both the transcription (what was said) and the translation (your reading language) are covered for each language pair. You can also see the original and the translation side by side — one does not replace the other.

How accurate are the live captions for streaming events?

Accuracy depends primarily on audio quality. Clear audio from a well-mixed stream with a single speaker typically produces high accuracy. Compressed streams at low bitrates, heavy background noise, multiple simultaneous speakers, or very strong non-native accents will reduce reliability. For contexts where high accuracy is a hard requirement — legal proceedings, medical briefings, formal depositions — a managed human captioning service is a more appropriate tool.

Does this work on my phone or tablet while watching a live stream?

Meet mode, which captures tab audio from a streaming event, requires desktop Chrome or Microsoft Edge. If you are watching a live stream on a phone, this specific use case is not supported. At an in-person event, Talk mode can instead capture a nearby speaker through the microphone in a supported mobile browser.

Do I need an account to try MirrorCaption?

You get 1 free hour to try with no credit card required and no monthly reset. Sign up at mirrorcaption.com/app to start. Your free hour is one-time — it doesn't reset monthly — so use it on an event where you actually want to test the quality.

Related reading: how to get live captions on any video call — live captions for deaf and hard of hearing users — difference between live captions and transcripts — real-time translation for remote teams — best meeting translators for 2026