You recorded a clean screen demo, but half the people who watch it have the sound off — on a phone, in an open office, or in a Slack thread. Without captions, your narration never reaches them. This guide covers how to add captions to a Mac screen recording, including the faster way: capturing them live, on screen, in a single pass.

The short version: you can either add subtitles afterward in a video editor, or overlay captions live while you record with a tool like Capnot so they're baked into the recording with no editing pass.

Key Takeaways

  • Two methods: post-production subtitles (accurate but slow) or live on-screen captions recorded in one pass (fast, no editing).
  • For live captions on macOS, Capnot can transcribe your speech on-device and overlay it as a subtitle bar, a dialogue panel, or a cursor-anchored bubble.
  • The one rule that trips people up: record your full display, not a single window, or system-level caption overlays won't appear in the file.

Two ways to add captions to a Mac screen recording

Method 1 — subtitles in post. Record first, then import the video into an editor (Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut) and add a subtitle track. Some tools auto-transcribe. This gives you precise, editable subtitles, but it's a separate step every time, and you re-render whenever the script changes.

Method 2 — live on-screen captions. Put the captions on screen while you record, so they're part of the footage. No subtitle file, no syncing, no second pass. This is what an overlay tool is for, and it's the method the rest of this guide walks through.

Which to use? If you need broadcast-grade, translated subtitle files, do Method 1. For tutorials, product demos, async walkthroughs, and support videos, Method 2 is far faster.

How to add live captions with Capnot

Capnot is a macOS menu-bar app that overlays captions on your screen. It doesn't record — you run it alongside your recorder — so the captions appear in whatever that recorder captures.

  1. Install Capnot and grant permissions. On first launch it asks for Accessibility (for global hotkeys). For Live Captions, it also requests Microphone and Speech Recognition access the first time you use the mic. Requires macOS 13 or later.
  2. Pick a caption style. Choose what fits the video: Bubble Chat (⌃/) anchors a caption to your cursor for pointing at things; the Subtitle / Dialogue bar (⌃.) puts a caption panel at the bottom of the screen, with an optional tab showing your name and photo.
  3. Turn on Live Captions. Press the mic on the caption panel and talk. Capnot transcribes your speech in real time using Apple's on-device Speech Recognition — the audio never leaves your Mac. Prefer to type? Enter captions manually before or during the take.
  4. Start your recorder on the full display (see the next section) and run your demo. The captions show on screen as you go.
  5. Stop recording. The captions are already in the file — nothing to sync or export.

Because Capnot overlays your whole display, the same captions appear whether you're recording locally or sharing your screen in Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams.

Live Captions in action — speak, and the text appears on screen, transcribed on-device.

Make sure captions show up in the recording

This is the one gotcha. Caption overlays are separate system-level windows, so you have to record the whole display, not a single app window — window recording only captures that one app's pixels and will miss the overlay.

  • QuickTime: File → New Screen Recording → record your full display (not a selected window).
  • OBS: add a Display Capture source, not a Window Capture.
  • Loom: choose Record Desktop, not Application Window.

If your captions don't appear in the final video, this is almost always why — and if you're using Apple's built-in Live Captions, they get hidden from capture entirely (see why Mac Live Captions disappear when you record).

Tips for captions that land

  • Keep each caption short. If it's a full sentence, it's probably two captions. Viewers read them at a glance.
  • Show the caption slightly before the action so the viewer knows what to look for.
  • Don't caption everything. Let the visuals carry the obvious steps; save captions for the moments that would confuse someone watching in silence.

For the reasoning behind designing demos this way, see why most people watch your screen demo with the sound off, and the use cases page for role-by-role examples. Recording without any narration? See how to record a silent screen demo. For the full overview, see the Mac screen captions guide.

Frequently asked questions

Does my speech get sent to the cloud?

No. Capnot's Live Captions use Apple's on-device Speech Recognition, so no audio is sent to any server (Capnot FAQ).

Which languages do live captions support?

Any language Apple's Speech Recognition supports on your Mac. Add languages in System Settings → General → Language & Region, then select them in Capnot's caption settings.

Do the captions work in Zoom or Google Meet?

Yes. The overlay sits on top of your entire display, so anything visible on your shared screen — including captions — appears in the call and in any recording of it.

Ready to caption your next recording in one pass? Get Capnot for macOS — $12.99 once, no subscription.