Zoom has a variety of options for creating virtual closed captioning in your Zoom meetings and webinars that provide subtitles for video conferencing. These options can be enabled and used by participants to easily follow the conversations or to meet accessibility requirements.

In a meeting, the host or another participant assigned by the host can provide manual captioning, an integrated third-party closed captioning service can provide the captioning, or Zoom’s automated captions (also known as live transcription) feature can provide automatic captioning. 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 viewing captions as a meeting participant or webinar attendee, refer to the user guide.

This article covers:

• Limitations of real-time transcriptions
• How to start automated captioning
• How to view the full transcript
• How to disable captions for everyone
• Supported languages for Automated Captions

Prerequisites for managing automated captioning 

• Zoom desktop client for Windows, macOS, or Linux: Global minimum version or higher*
• Zoom mobile app for Android or iOS: Global minimum version or higher*
• Automated captioning enabled

Limitations of real-time transcriptions

• If you cannot provide captioning manually or with a third-party service, the automated live transcription feature is also available but has limitations to take note of. The accuracy of the automated captions depends on many variables, such as but not limited to background noise, volume and clarity of the speaker’s voice, and lexicons and dialects specific to geography or community. Because of these limitations, if you are required to use speech-to-text support for any compliance or accessibility needs in your meetings and webinars, we recommend using a manual captioner or service that may be able to guarantee a specific accuracy.
• If manual captioning is enabled for the session, you can't use automated captions in the meeting/webinar or breakout rooms.
• For webinars, hosts using desktop client versions lower than 5.11.9 can inadvertently cause both manual captioning and automated captioning to be shown at the same time. It is recommended that hosts update to version 5.11.9 or higher to avoid this issue. 
  • As a workaround during a live webinar, the host can disable automated captioning to avoid competing captions.
• Some HIPAA-security enabled accounts do not have access to automated captions. Please contact your Account Executive to update your HIPAA-security agreement in order to have this enabled for your account. 
• Automated captions are not available for On-Prem accounts.

How to start automated captioning

By default, captions can be enabled and viewed by any participant in the meeting. When using automated captions, English is the default language, but you can select other languages. 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. Start or join a Zoom meeting or webinar. 
2. In the meeting controls toolbar, click Show Captions .
3. Choose the speaking language.
4. (Optional) Select the Enable Translation check box and choose which language you want captions to be translated in. This feature is only available to select accounts. Learn more about translated captions.
5. Click Save.

Notes:

• The availability of languages is determined by the host's automated captioning settings.
• The speaking language choice is set by each participant individually and is remembered for future meetings. 

How to request automated captioning

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 need to approve a request for captions to be available for all participants for the rest of the current meeting.

1. Start or join a Zoom meeting or webinar. 
   If a participant requests captions, a window will appear, explaining the request. 
2. Choose the speaking language the meeting participants are currently using. 
   Note: Choosing the proper language affects captioning quality. 
3. Click Enable to allow captions in the meeting, or click Decline to continue the meeting without the use of captions. 

How to view the full transcript

You can view a full transcription of your meeting or webinar if full transcript is enabled. 

1. In the meeting controls toolbar, next to the Show Captions icon , click the up arrow icon . 
2. Under Your Caption Settings, click View Full Transcript. 
   The Transcript panel will appear, displaying the session's full transcript.
3. (Optional) At the bottom of the Transcript panel, click Save Transcript to save a file of the full transcript.
4. (Optional) Use the search bar to search through the transcript.
5. (Optional) To hide the full transcript, in the top-right corner of the Transcript panel, click the down arrow icon , then click Close.

How to disable captions for everyone

1. In the meeting controls toolbar, next to the Show Captions icon , click the up arrow icon . 
2. Under the Host Controls section, click Disable captions. 
   Automated captions will end for all participants. 

Supported languages for Automated Captions

Supported languages currently include:

• Arabic 
• Cantonese
• Chinese (Simplified) 
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Czech 
• Danish 
• Dutch
• English
• Estonian
• Finnish 
• French
• French (Canada)
• German
• Hungarian 
• Hindi 
• Indonesian 
• Italian
• Japanese 
• Korean
• Malay 
• Persian 
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish 
• Tagalog 
• Tamil
• Telugu 
• Thai
• Turkish
• Ukrainian
• Vietnamese