How to add captions to a screen recording on a Mac
Five steps to captioned narration, transcribed on your Mac and burned into the export.
Most people watch product videos with the sound off, so a screen recording without captions loses its narration entirely. The usual route is a cloud transcription service, which means uploading the recording. This guide adds captions with Capta, a free macOS screen recorder that transcribes narration on the Mac itself and burns the captions into the export.
What you need
- A Mac with macOS 14 or later and Apple silicon.
- Capta, free, 2.5 MB.
- A microphone. Speech is transcribed by Apple's on-device speech models, which need no internet connection.
Switch the microphone on before you record
Open the capture panel with ⌥⌘5 and switch on Mic under With. The built-in microphone is fine for a demo; if you have an external one, pick it in Settings. The mic is off by default and Capta never listens when you are not recording.
Talk while you record
Press ⌥⌘R and narrate in plain sentences: what you are clicking and why it matters. Speak a little slower than usual and finish each sentence. Capta steers its cuts away from your sentences, so complete ones give it more to work with. Stop with ⌥⌘R.
Read the captions on the words lane
When you stop, the transcription is already done: Capta uses Apple's on-device speech models, so the audio never leaves your Mac. Each line appears on the words lane of the timeline, timed to when you said it, and the same lines are listed in the Sound tab. The music, if you added one, is lowered under your voice automatically.
Fix any word
Speech models get product names and jargon wrong more often than ordinary words. Click a line in the Sound tab, retype it, and the burned-in caption updates in the preview. Long transcripts scroll inside the tab.
Export with captions burned in
Press Export. Captions are rendered into the frames, so they show in every player and in social feeds that autoplay muted, which is where most people will meet your video. For a square or vertical social cut, pick that size in Export; the captions re-flow to fit.
Common questions
Do I need Apple Intelligence for captions?
No. Transcription uses Apple's on-device speech models, which are separate from Apple Intelligence. With Apple Intelligence enabled, Capta can additionally pick the demo's key moment for the strongest zoom and write titles and a social post; without it, those features fall back to non-AI versions or switch off.
Can I add captions to a recording I already made?
Captions come from the narration Capta recorded, so a take made with the mic off has no words to transcribe. Record the take again with Mic on, or narrate a fresh take over the same flow.
Where does the transcript go?
Into the recording's own folder in ~/Movies/Capta, next to the video, and nowhere else. The privacy page has the details.
One shortcut to record, one click to export.