Viewing captions in a meeting or webinar

Zoom has a variety of options for creating closed captioning in meetings and webinars you attend, which provides subtitles of the spoken in-meeting communications. This may be used for participants to easily follow the conversations or to meet accessibility requirements.

In meetings, it is possible to view manual captioning, captioning provided by an integrated third-party closed captioning service, or Zoom’s live transcription feature can automatically provide captions. These same options are available with webinars, although manual captioning can only be provided by the host or a panelist. Any of these captioning options are also viewable in Zoom Rooms.

For more information about enabling and using closed captioning or live transcription as a host, refer to the managing manual captioning and managing automated captioning articles. 

This article covers:

Prerequisites for viewing captions in a meeting

Supported languages for automated captioning

Supported languages currently include:

How to view captioning and choose your speaking language

If closed captioning or automated captions are available during a meeting or webinar, you can view these as a participant. These can also be viewed while in Zoom Rooms.

View closed captioning or live transcription during a meeting or webinar

  1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
  2. Join a meeting or webinar.
  3. In the meeting controls toolbar, click the Show Captions icon .
  4. (Optional) Click-and-drag the captions to move their position in the meeting window. 

Note: Closed captioning is available on Linux, but live transcription is not yet available.

Set your speaking language

You may be prompted to set the speaking language when you enable captions. The speaking language selection impacts all participants. English is the default language, but other languages can be selected. This tells the system which language it will hear you speak in and generates captions in that language. If speaking in language A, but Zoom is expecting language B, the generated captions will be inaccurate.

  1. In the meeting controls toolbar, next to Show Captions , click the up arrow icon . 
  2. Click Speaking language, then select a language.
  3. On the pop-up, confirm the language you want to set as the spoken language, then click Save. 
    Zoom will transcribe captions in the chosen language for all participants.

Notes:

  • The availability of languages is determined by the host's automated captioning settings.
  • In versions lower than 5.12.9, when a participant turned on captions, they would immediately see captions in whatever language other people are speaking in. If another participant had their speaking language set to German, then the person who just turned on captions would see German.

Requesting captions in the meeting

If the host has restricted who can enable captions in a meeting, participants will need to request captions be enabled for the current meeting. The host and potentially co-hosts as well, depending on settings, will receive the request and can approve or decline, as well as setting the speaking language.

  1. Join a Zoom meeting or webinar. 
  2. In the meeting controls toolbar, click Request Captions . 
    A request is sent to the host, with a notification in the center meeting window.
    The host and potentially co-hosts will review the request and then approve or decline.
    If approved, captions will immediately appear for the requestor and others. 

Automatically show captions when available

If you want to always have captions displayed, if they are available in that meeting or webinar, users can adjust their client accessibility settings to make this happen automatically. 

  1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
  2. Click your profile picture then click Settings.
  3. Click the Accessibility tab.
  4. Under Closed Captioning, click the checkbox to enable Always show captions.
    When captions are enabled by the host of the meeting or webinar, captions will be automatically displayed for you. 

Android | iOS

View closed captioning or live transcription during a meeting or webinar

  1. Sign in to the Zoom mobile app.
  2. Join a meeting or webinar.
  3. In the meeting controls toolbar, swipe and tap the Captions icon .
    Captions will appear above the meeting controls.

Set your speaking language 

You may be prompted to set the speaking language when you enable captions. The speaking language selection impacts all participants. English is the default language, but other languages can be selected. This tells the system which language it will hear you speak in and generates captions in that language. If speaking in language A, but Zoom is expecting language B, the generated captions will be inaccurate.

  1. In the meeting controls toolbar, swipe and tap the More icon .
  2. Tap Meeting Settings. 
  3. Tap the Speaking Language option. 
  4. Tap the language you are speaking in, then tap Done.
  5. Tap Done again to exit the meeting settings and return to the meeting.

Notes:

  • The availability of languages is determined by the host's automated captioning settings.
  • In versions lower than 5.12.9, when a participant turned on captions, they would immediately see captions in whatever language other people are speaking in. If another participant had their speaking language set to German, then the person who just turned on captions would see German.

Web client

View closed captioning or live transcription during a meeting or webinar

  1. Join a meeting or webinar through the Zoom web client. 

  2. In the meeting controls toolbar, click the Show Captions icon .

Set your speaking language 

When using automated captions, English is the default language, but other languages can be selected. This tells the system which language it will hear you speak in and generates captions in that language. If speaking in language A, but Zoom is expecting language B, the generated captions will be inaccurate. 

  1. In the meeting controls toolbar, next to the Show Captions icon , click the up arrow icon . 
  2. Click Speaking language, then select a language.
  3. On the pop-up, confirm the language you want to set as the spoken language, then click Save. 
    Zoom will transcribe captions in the chosen language.

Note: The availability of languages is determined by the host's automated captioning settings.

Chrome OS

View closed captioning during a meeting or webinar

  1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
  2. Join a meeting or webinar.
  3. Click Closed Caption to start viewing closed captioning.

Note: Closed captioning is available on ChromeOS, but live transcription is not yet available.

How to adjust the font size of captions

  1. In the meeting controls toolbar, next to the Show Captions icon , click the up arrow icon . 
  2. Click Caption settings.
  3. Next to Font Size, move the slider to adjust the caption size slider.png.