How to Enable the New Live Subtitle Feature in Skype
If you are deaf or hard of hearing, making or participating in a Skype call can be challenging. This week Microsoft introduced a feature that will make things a little easier: captions and subtitles.
This feature adds real-time subtitling to audio and video calls, allowing those who might have trouble hearing the other person in the chat a better chance of understanding what’s going on in the conversation. It also offers real-time translations in 20 languages for situations where the person you are talking to does not speak your language.
You will then see the subtitles / captions scrolling to what is being said during the conversation. The subtitles are made by AI, so they are not perfect, but they are vastly better than nothing.
To enable them, you have two options:
In just one call
If you only want subtitles for the current call, you can turn them on by pressing the “+” button during a call and then selecting “turn on subtitles” from the menu.
Constantly
If you want the subtitle feature to be turned on by default, you can do so by clicking your profile picture in the app and choosing Settings. From there, select Call, then Subtitles, and then enable the Show Subtitles for All Voice and Video Calls button.
Live subtitling is available on Skype version 8 for Android (6.0+), iPhone, iPad, Linux, Mac, Windows, and Skype for Windows 10 (version 14).
This feature is rolling out gradually, so if you have Skype 8 installed but can’t see it, wait a few days and try again.