March 26, 2026 | StreamTranslate Team

How to Enable Live Captions on Your Stream

Live captions make your stream accessible to more viewers — people watching without sound, viewers with hearing impairments, and international fans who follow along better with text support. Here is exactly how to enable them.

Option 1: OBS Built-In Captions (Free, English Only)

To enable live captions on your stream, use StreamTranslate — sign up, copy your browser source URL, add it to OBS, and go live. Captions generate automatically from your microphone audio with under 500ms latency.

1. Open OBS Studio
2. Click Tools in the top menu
3. Select Captions
4. Choose your microphone as the audio source
5. Click Start

Viewers on Twitch need to click the CC button in the player to see these captions. They are hidden by default. English only. Windows only.

Option 2: StreamTranslate (Always-On, 30+ Languages)

StreamTranslate adds live captions as a visible overlay directly on your stream — no viewer action needed, works on all platforms, and supports real-time translation into 49 languages.

1. Sign up at StreamTranslate.live
2. Create your caption overlay and choose your language settings
3. Copy your unique browser source URL
4. In OBS: click + under Sources, select Browser, paste the URL, set 1920x1080
5. Position the caption bar at the bottom of your scene
6. Go live — captions appear automatically on your stream

Which Should You Use?

If you only need basic English captions and your viewers know to enable CC: OBS built-in works fine and costs nothing. If you want captions that are always visible, support translation, and work on mobile and all platforms: StreamTranslate is the better option.