Zoom Closed Captioning - In Meeting

Zoom Closed Captions

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:

• How to view captioning and choose your speaking language
• How to adjust the font size of captions

Prerequisites for viewing captions in a meeting

• 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
• Manual or automated captions enabled

Notes:

• Automated captioning support for languages besides English in Webinars requires client version 5.11.9 or higher. 
• Automatically showing captions when available requires version 5.14.0 or higher

How to view captioning and choose your speaking language

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

Windows | macOS | Linux

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 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 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.

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.