Overlays transform a raw gameplay capture into a professional broadcast. StreamTranslate's caption overlay is the easiest way to add live captions and translations to any stream setup.
Add Caption Overlay FreeA stream overlay is any graphical element placed on top of your primary video content — your gameplay, camera feed, or screen capture. Overlays exist in a separate layer in your streaming software (OBS, Streamlabs, XSplit, etc.) and are composited on top of your video feed before the final stream output is encoded and sent to your platform.
Overlays serve both functional and aesthetic purposes. Aesthetically, they make streams look polished and professional with branded frames, custom fonts, and cohesive visual design. Functionally, they communicate information to viewers: who just followed, how close you are to a donation goal, what song is playing, and — most importantly for accessibility and global reach — what you're saying in real time via live captions.
Common stream overlays include webcam borders and frames, follower/subscriber/donation alert animations, chat boxes, donation progress bars, now-playing widgets, and caption/subtitle overlays. Most overlays today are delivered via browser sources, which render HTML/CSS/JavaScript content directly in the stream.
Caption overlays are one of the most impactful additions to any stream. For deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, captions make content accessible that would otherwise be completely inaccessible. For non-native speakers of your language, caption overlays enable comprehension and — when combined with translation like StreamTranslate provides — allow viewers to follow your stream in their own language.
StreamTranslate's caption overlay works as a browser source that you add to OBS in under 60 seconds. It captures your microphone audio, processes it through Deepgram Nova-2 ASR for transcription, runs it through NMT translation into any of 125+ languages, and renders the result as clean text in your chosen style over your stream. The overlay is transparent by default so it layers naturally over any scene layout.
You can customize every aspect of the caption overlay from the StreamTranslate dashboard: font family and size, text color and stroke, background opacity, number of caption lines, horizontal alignment, and vertical position. Whether you want minimal bottom-screen captions or prominent centered subtitles, StreamTranslate's overlay adapts to your stream's visual identity.
Control font, size, color, background opacity, position, and caption line count from the StreamTranslate dashboard without touching any code.
The caption overlay is transparent by default, layering cleanly over your gameplay, camera, or any other stream element.
StreamTranslate's overlay can display captions in any of 125+ languages, letting global viewers follow your stream in their native language.
A stream overlay is a graphical layer placed on top of your video feed in OBS or streaming software, adding visual elements like alerts, chat boxes, and live captions.
Caption overlays render transcribed or translated text as a transparent layer over your stream. StreamTranslate delivers captions via a browser source URL added to OBS as a top-layer source.
Yes. StreamTranslate lets you customize font, size, color, background opacity, position, and number of caption lines displayed simultaneously.
Lightweight caption overlays have minimal impact. They're rendered by OBS before encoding, adding no extra bandwidth to the stream itself.
Common overlays include webcam borders, alert boxes, chat widgets, donation goals, now-playing music displays, and live caption overlays like StreamTranslate.