Indonesian live captions and productivity tool for restaurants & cafes
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow Indonesian restaurants & cafes
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Indonesian speakers.
Follow the conversation through the noise
- Captions the person across the table in real time
- Works through typical restaurant background noise
- Place the phone between you — no adjustment needed
- No lip reading, no facing the speaker
Restaurants abroad or with foreign speakers
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- For waitstaff, companions, or travel dining
- 60+ languages, no setup
- Translates in real time as they speak
Transcribe any recorded conversation
- Record and get the full conversation in writing
- Review anything you missed after the meal
- Organised by speaker
- Any language, any format
Key points from any conversation
- Important points extracted from any recording
- Useful for business lunches and important catch-ups
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
A warung makan dinner in Jakarta or a family restaurant in Surabaya — friends talking fast in colloquial Indonesian, Javanese phrases mixing in. Captio AI captions each speaker in real time so a deaf diner can follow the table.
A business makan siang in a Jakarta office district restaurant — Indonesian with English terms, where losing a detail about a project has real consequences. Captio AI follows every exchange.
A kopi catch-up at a Javanese warung or a modern Jakarta café — ambient background noise, two people across a small table. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking so a deaf person can contribute.
Dining at an Indonesian restaurant abroad — in the Netherlands, Australia, or Singapore — where waitstaff speak a mix of Indonesian and English. Live Translator bridges the gap in real time.
A Lebaran family gathering at a restaurant, a birthday makan, or a group celebration — many people, elevated noise, overlapping conversations. Captio AI makes the gathering followable.
A lunch date or one-on-one meet where conversation matters — Indonesian across a small restaurant table. Captio AI lets you follow every exchange without the accommodation being conspicuous.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
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Download on theApp Store
Built for the table — however noisy the room
Follows the person across the table
Point the microphone toward the person speaking and Captio AI captions them through the background noise. You do not need to face them, watch their lips, or lean in.
Works through restaurant noise
Restaurant noise averages 80 dBA — well above comfortable conversation level. Captio AI is built for these real environments, not quiet controlled rooms.
Place it and forget it
Put the phone on the table between you and the other person, microphone facing them. You glance at it as needed. No adjusting between sentences, no managing the setup.
No asking for repeats during the meal
Every word appears in real time. If you missed something, the caption is there — you do not need to stop the conversation and ask anyone to say it again.
Any language
For restaurants abroad, multilingual dining companions, or waitstaff who speak a different language. Live Translator captions and translates in real time with no manual setup.
Discreet
A phone on a restaurant table is unremarkable. Captio AI runs quietly, the screen faces you, and most dining companions adapt naturally once they understand what it does.
Why Indonesian is hard to understand
Javanese retroflex layer
- Retroflex consonants from Javanese colour Indonesian speech
- Javanese adds retroflex consonants /ʈ/ (th) and /ɖ/ (dh) absent from standard Indonesian. Since the majority of Indonesian speakers are Javanese first-language speakers, Javanese-accented Indonesian — the dominant variety in Central and East Java — introduces these retroflex sounds into everyday Indonesian conversation. At a restaurant table in Yogyakarta or Solo, a deaf lip-reader encounters consonants that standard Indonesian does not have.
Formal vs colloquial register gap
- What is written and what is said are very different
- Standard Indonesian (Bahasa Baku) is the formal register. Colloquial Indonesian (Bahasa Gaul) used in restaurants and social settings drops affixes, substitutes informal pronouns, and uses Jakarta slang liberally. The same sentence looks and sounds completely different in the two registers, and the colloquial version is what every dining companion uses at the table.
Reduplication blurs at speed
- Reduplicated words compress into single units
- Indonesian uses grammatical reduplication — 'buku-buku' (books), 'jalan-jalan' (strolling). In fast speech, the reduplicated form compresses into a rapid repeated movement with no clear boundary between the two halves. At conversational speed in a noisy restaurant, reduplicated words produce a visual blur rather than a distinguishable repeated unit.
Regional language mixing
- Javanese, Sundanese, and Batak enter without warning
- Indonesia has over 700 regional languages. In a Jakarta restaurant, Javanese, Sundanese, Betawi, and English phrases appear mid-Indonesian conversation without any signal. Each regional language has distinct phonological features — Sundanese has phonemic distinctions absent from Indonesian, Batak has strongly retroflex varieties. A deaf lip-reader has no way to predict the switch.
Fast urban Indonesian
- Jakarta speech rate accelerates in social settings
- Urban Jakarta Indonesian is fast, contracted, and mixed with English and regional language insertions. The Lombard Effect at a noisy restaurant pushes all speakers faster and louder. The colloquial Indonesian of a warung makan or a mal food court bears little resemblance to the Indonesian of a textbook or a formal broadcast.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in Indonesia: the scale of daily exclusion
Indonesia's Central Statistics Agency found in 2015 that almost nine million Indonesians over the age of 10 had difficulty hearing. A 2022 survey estimated more than 22 million people with disabilities in Indonesia overall — around 5% of the total population. Of these, approximately 74% of the deaf population is unemployed, a figure that reflects the severe structural exclusion faced by deaf Indonesians in both the economy and in public social life. There are only 79 schools for deaf students for a deaf student population exceeding two million, leaving one-third of deaf children with no access to any schooling.
Sign language interpreters are scarce across Indonesia — available in some government facilities and hospitals in major cities, but absent from the social settings where daily life actually happens: the warung makan, the family restaurant gathering, the kerukunan community dinner. Research on hearing loss and social dining published in 2024 found that people with hearing loss disengage from restaurant dining at significantly higher rates globally — a pattern that is especially acute in Indonesia, where communal eating is one of the central expressions of social and family life.
Captio AI captions Indonesian conversation in real time, so a deaf or hard-of-hearing person can follow a warung makan dinner in Jakarta, a family restaurant gathering in Surabaya, or a business lunch in Bali without asking others to slow down or repeat.
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
"Warung makan dinners with colleagues — fast colloquial Jakarta Indonesian, Javanese phrases, English mixed in. I used to follow maybe a third. Captio AI gives me the whole conversation."
"Javanese retroflex sounds in Indonesian were always invisible to me. Captio AI handles the accent and the regional mix. Family restaurant gatherings feel completely different now."
"Indonesian restaurant in Melbourne with the community group — colloquial Indonesian, regional languages mixing in. Captio AI follows it all. I stopped feeling like a spectator at community meals."
"Restaurant dinner with old university friends — everyone talks fast Javanese-accented Indonesian and I used to lose the thread constantly. Captio AI gives me every word. I laugh at the right moments now."
"Warung makan dinners with colleagues — fast colloquial Jakarta Indonesian, Javanese phrases, English mixed in. I used to follow maybe a third. Captio AI gives me the whole conversation."
"Javanese retroflex sounds in Indonesian were always invisible to me. Captio AI handles the accent and the regional mix. Family restaurant gatherings feel completely different now."
"Indonesian restaurant in Melbourne with the community group — colloquial Indonesian, regional languages mixing in. Captio AI follows it all. I stopped feeling like a spectator at community meals."
"Restaurant dinner with old university friends — everyone talks fast Javanese-accented Indonesian and I used to lose the thread constantly. Captio AI gives me every word. I laugh at the right moments now."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Have a real conversation through the noise in Indonesian.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store