How to Get Live Translated Captions in Microsoft Teams

Live translated captions in Microsoft Teams itself depend on your organisation's licence and settings. To get them on any Teams call, open the AI Live Voice Translator in Chrome or Edge, choose Tab or screen sound, and share the Teams tab (Teams on the web) or your whole screen with system audio (Teams app). Colleagues' words appear with a translation beside them as they speak.

Translate a Teams call step by step

1. Join the call in Teams — the desktop app, or Teams in your browser at teams.microsoft.com.
2. Open the AI Live Voice Translator in Chrome or Edge.
3. Set Listen to:
   • Tab or screen sound to translate other people.
   • Meeting: shared sound + my mic to translate everyone including you (use headphones).
4. Set the Spoken language — or Auto-detect with the languages your colleagues use.
5. Set Translate into to your language.
6. Click Start listening and share:
   • Teams in a browser tab: choose that tab and tick Share tab audio.
   • Teams desktop app: choose Entire screen and tick Share system audio (Chrome and Edge on Windows).
7. Captions and translations appear as people talk.

Keep the captions visible

• Floating captions opens a small window that stays on top of the Teams window (Chrome and Edge on a computer), so you can watch slides and read the translation together.
• Full-screen captions turns the screen into a caption display — useful for a meeting room screen where several people need the translation.

Teams' own translation features

Microsoft Teams offers live captions, and in some plans translated live captions and interpretation features. Their availability depends on licences (such as Teams Premium) and admin settings. If your organisation has them, they're a good option; if not, the browser translator works on any call, including calls with external organisations.

Choosing the engine

• Gemini AI gives the most natural translations; the recognised text (not audio) is sent to iPixHub's server for translation and isn't stored. Daily use is metered.
• Chrome built-in translates on your device with no limit (desktop Chrome 138+).

Speech from a shared tab or screen is always recognised in your browser by OpenAI's Whisper model — the meeting audio never leaves your computer.

Practical tips

• Join with good audio: a call that's hard to hear gives poor captions.
• Auto-detect for international teams: list two or three languages and each speaker's phrases are recognised automatically.
• Copy the transcript after the call for notes. To summarise long notes later, paste them into a document and use the AI PDF Summarizer on the PDF.
• Check names and numbers: speech recognition sometimes mishears figures, product names and people's names.

Workplace considerations

• Follow your organisation's policies. Some companies restrict third-party tools in meetings. Browser recognition with Whisper and Chrome's built-in translator keeps everything on your device, which may help — but check.
• Be transparent with colleagues that you're using live translation.
• Don't rely on it for HR, legal or safety-critical discussions; use a qualified interpreter.

Recording versus translating

The translator doesn't record audio. If the meeting needs to be recorded, use Teams' recording feature or the Screen Recorder — with everyone's consent.

Frequently asked questions

Does it work with the Teams mobile app?

Sharing call audio needs a desktop browser. On a phone, the microphone mode can listen to a call on another device's speaker in a quiet room.

How fast are the captions?

Phrases are translated when the speaker pauses — typically a second or two after they finish a sentence, longer on slower computers.

Can it translate both directions?

Yes. With auto-detect and two languages listed, each phrase is translated into the other language, so a bilingual conversation is followed both ways.