French live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow French everyday conversations
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing French speakers.
Captions any conversation in real time
- Word by word, as the person speaks
- Works in noisy places — counters, streets, busy rooms
- Any accent, any pace
- No lip reading needed
Everyday conversations in any language
- Translates as they speak, not after
- Each person speaks their own language
- Handles mid-sentence switches
- 60+ languages, no setup
Save any conversation for later
- Record and get the full transcript
- Organized by speaker
- Read, copy, search, share
- Any language, any audio
Key points from any exchange
- Important points extracted automatically
- Works on any saved transcript
- Organized into clear sections
- Nothing gets missed
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Pharmacie counter, La Poste window, supermarket checkout, mairie desk. Staff speak at full French pace and move on quickly. Captio AI shows what they said before the moment passes.
Sunday family lunch, birthday dinner, apéro with friends. Fast overlapping conversation, accents varying between regions and generations. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking.
Asking for directions in the city, chatting with a neighbour in the immeuble, meeting someone at the marché. People who speak at full conversational pace. Captio AI captions anyone near you.
Pause café conversation, a quick question in the couloir, catch-up before a meeting. The moments French workplaces run on. Captio AI keeps you in those conversations.
Cabinet médical, prefecture counter, CAF office, bank branch. Formal vocabulary, fast delivery, no repeat expected. Captio AI transcribes everything said so you can follow and respond.
Métro and RER announcements, bus driver, asking at a gare, taxi conversation. Situations where you need to understand the first time. Captio AI covers you anywhere.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Built for conversations that don't wait
Captions as they speak, not after
Captio AI shows each word as it is spoken. You read what the person is saying while they are still saying it — not after they have finished and moved on.
No lip reading needed
You do not need to face the speaker or position yourself to see their mouth. Captio AI picks up speech from any direction — across a counter, at a table, in a busy street.
Works through background noise
Restaurants, pharmacies, busy streets, crowded waiting rooms. Captio AI separates speech from background noise so captions stay accurate where everyday conversations actually happen.
Follows any conversation
One person or six. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking at any moment — so you follow the thread at a dinner table or keep up with a counter exchange without losing track.
Any accent, any pace
People do not slow down or enunciate for you. Captio AI handles fast talkers, regional accents, and casual speech — the way people actually talk in real life.
Any language, no setup
When someone speaks a language you do not know, switch to Live Translator. They speak their language — you read in yours. No configuration needed. Works in 60+ languages.
Why French is hard to understand
Liaison and elision
- French connects and drops sounds between words until the word boundaries disappear
- French liaison connects the final consonant of one word to the initial vowel of the next. Elision drops vowels before other vowels. At normal conversational speed, these processes blend words into continuous streams with no visible breaks. What looks like three separate words in writing flows as a single phonetic unit in speech — and on the lips, it is nearly impossible to parse.
Nasal vowels
- French nasal vowels reduce visible mouth movement
- French has four nasal vowels (an, in, on, un) that are pronounced with airflow through the nose rather than fully through the mouth. This reduces the visible oral articulation that a lip reader depends on. At conversational speed, nasal vowel-heavy French speech provides very little visual information.
Parisian speed
- Spoken Parisian French is extremely fast by European standards
- Parisian colloquial French — spoken at cafés, in streets, in workplaces — is among the fastest varieties of any European language. Syllables are reduced, vowels are shortened, and informal registers like verlan (reversed slang) add an entirely new vocabulary layer. Even hearing non-native speakers struggle to follow native Parisian speech at full speed.
Verlan and youth slang
- French youth slang reverses and reshapes words — adding a second language within the language
- Verlan is a French slang where syllables are reversed — 'l'envers' becomes 'verlan', 'femme' becomes 'meuf', 'bizarre' becomes 'zarbi'. Used heavily among younger speakers in urban France, verlan is not a dialect but a code that requires knowing two vocabulary systems simultaneously. For a deaf or hard of hearing person following captions, encountering verlan adds further unpredictability.
Discrimination in daily life
- 39% of deaf French people report discrimination when dealing with public services
- Research on the French deaf experience shows that 39% of deaf people in France report discrimination when dealing with public authorities or services — including staff who speak while turning away, display impatience with written requests, and refuse to maintain eye contact. In informal daily settings, the barriers are even higher.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store10 million people with hearing loss in France. Discrimination reported in 22% of disability cases.
One in four French adults — 25% — has some form of hearing loss, according to a landmark study by Inserm, France's national health research institute. Around 180,000 people in France define themselves as deaf, approximately half of whom use French Sign Language (LSF). Around 10 million people overall have some degree of hearing loss, yet only 37% of those with severe hearing loss wear a hearing aid. For deaf and hard of hearing people navigating French daily life, exclusion is embedded in the ordinary: the boulangerie counter where the staff speak quickly and impatiently, the café terrace where the conversation runs at Parisian speed, the family Sunday lunch where verlan and fast colloquial French are the register, not the exception.
39% of deaf people in France report experiencing discrimination when dealing with public services or authorities, according to research published by Deaf24. In 2024, 22% of all reported discrimination cases in France involved people with disabilities, with deaf and hard of hearing people disproportionately represented. Despite the 2005 Disability Act and the 2017 Equality and Citizenship Act, implementation in informal daily settings remains minimal. The boulangerie, the café, and the family kitchen have no legal obligation to accommodate deaf customers or guests.
France's ageing population and the underdiagnosis of hearing loss — only 37% of those who need hearing aids use them — mean the true scale of daily-life exclusion is larger than official figures suggest. Captio AI captions French speech in real time — including fast Parisian speech, liaison-heavy connected speech, and Belgian, Swiss, and Quebec French — so the boulangerie, the café terrace, and the family lunch are no longer settings you have to navigate alone.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat you hear stays with you.
Gone the moment it ends
Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.
Not a product
Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.
Not used to train anything
What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"Parisian French is so fast and the liaison makes it impossible to tell where words end. Captio AI gives me the actual words. The boulangerie is something I go to alone every morning now."
"Sunday lunch with my family runs for three hours in fast French with verlan from my cousins. Captio AI follows all of it. I stopped pretending to laugh at jokes I did not hear."
"Belgian French has its own rhythm and vocabulary. Captio AI handles it accurately. Café conversations in Brussels are completely different now."
"Québécois French is very different from Parisian French. Captio AI handles both. Running errands in Montreal alone — pharmacie, bakery, market — is easy now."
"Parisian French is so fast and the liaison makes it impossible to tell where words end. Captio AI gives me the actual words. The boulangerie is something I go to alone every morning now."
"Sunday lunch with my family runs for three hours in fast French with verlan from my cousins. Captio AI follows all of it. I stopped pretending to laugh at jokes I did not hear."
"Belgian French has its own rhythm and vocabulary. Captio AI handles it accurately. Café conversations in Brussels are completely different now."
"Québécois French is very different from Parisian French. Captio AI handles both. Running errands in Montreal alone — pharmacie, bakery, market — is easy now."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow any conversation in French.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store