Korean live captions and productivity tool for tv & media
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow Korean tv & media
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Korean speakers.
Captions anything playing in real time
- Point the phone toward the speaker and read along
- Works on any TV, laptop, tablet, or phone
- No subtitle file required — captions from the audio directly
- Faster than pre-generated subtitles for live content
Watch content in any language
- Foreign films, foreign news, foreign YouTube — all translated in real time
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- 60+ languages, no setup
- Works as content plays
Full transcript of any recording
- Upload a recording and get the complete written transcript
- For lectures, podcasts, talks, or any long-form content
- Searchable and copyable
- Any language, any format
Key points from any content
- Main ideas and takeaways from any transcript
- Useful for news, documentaries, and long-form content
- 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.
KBS, MBC, and SBS run live news and sport that pre-generated captions can lag behind. Point Captio AI at your TV and read the Korean as it is spoken, not several seconds behind the anchor.
Wavve, TVING, and Netflix vary in subtitle quality and availability. Captio AI works as a consistent fallback for any Korean show or film that ships with wrong, delayed, or missing captions.
YouTube auto-captions for Korean are often inaccurate and most social video has none. Point Captio AI at your phone and read accurate Korean captions for any clip.
A foreign film, a foreign documentary, a non-Korean channel. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so anything becomes watchable in Korean as it plays.
Not every cinema showing is captioned. Hold Captio AI near the audio and read real-time Korean captions of the dialogue discreetly from your seat.
Most Korean podcasts have no transcript. Hold Captio AI near the audio or upload a recording, and read the whole episode in writing.
Most accurate and fastest models
character accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Built for the content that subtitles fail
Captions any content in real time
Point the phone toward any speaker — TV, laptop, tablet, cinema screen. Captio AI captions whatever is playing, regardless of whether that platform provides subtitles.
Faster than built-in subtitles for live content
Pre-generated subtitles lag behind live TV by several seconds. Captio AI captions in real time — so you read what is being said as it is being said.
Works on any screen or device
No integration required. Point the phone toward the audio source — the same approach works for a large TV, a laptop screen, a cinema, or a phone held at arm's length.
Any language, translated in real time
For foreign-language content, switch to Live Translator. It translates as content plays — so a French film, a German documentary, or a Japanese series all become watchable.
No subtitle file needed
Captio AI captions from the audio directly. No subtitle file, no platform support, no creator requirement. If audio plays, Captio AI can caption it.
More accurate than auto-generated captions
The industry average for AI-generated subtitles is a 10–15% word error rate — roughly 1 in 10 words wrong (3Play Media). Captio AI is built for accuracy in real-world audio conditions.
Why Korean is hard to understand
Three-way stops
- Plain, tense, and aspirated — three where the screen shows one
- Korean is unusual in having three kinds of voiceless stop: plain, tense, and aspirated. The differences are voice quality and the pitch of the following vowel, not lip shape. On a drama or a news read, three different consonants look identical to a deaf viewer on screen.
Batchim liaison
- Final consonants that resurface on the next word
- Korean final consonants are often unreleased but link onto a following vowel-initial word and change under assimilation. A deaf viewer sees a syllable-final consonant seem to disappear, then reappear on the next word in altered form — so word boundaries are unreadable on screen.
Honorific register
- Formal speech levels reshape verb endings
- News and formal drama use layered honorific and polite endings that lengthen and restructure the end of every sentence. A deaf viewer who lip-reads casual Korean meets a formal register in which the sentence-final forms carrying the point take unfamiliar shapes.
Sino-Korean homophones
- Same-sounding vocabulary resolved by context
- Korean draws heavily on Sino-Korean compounds with many homophones, resolved by context. In a dense drama or a documentary voiceover, a deaf viewer who misses the context cannot recover which of several identical-sounding terms was meant.
Korean–English on screen
- English terms dropped into Korean content
- K-dramas, variety shows, and vlogs drop English terms and product names into Korean sentences constantly. A deaf viewer meets English phonology on the key word, then returns to Korean, with no visual warning and no lip to read after a fast cut.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreKorea captions broadcast TV — but the gaps are in what deaf viewers watch
Hearing loss is widespread in South Korea: a national study found minimal hearing loss in around 37% of people aged 12 and over, and the registered hearing-disabled population roughly doubled between 2010 and 2020. Korean broadcast television carries closed captioning on much of its programming, and captions are a familiar part of the country's media culture.
But the on-screen captions common in Korean entertainment are often 'impact captions' — stylised text added for effect, aimed at hearing viewers, not the verbatim accessibility captions a deaf viewer depends on. Live programming can still lag, streaming platforms vary in caption quality and often under-serve foreign-language content for deaf viewers in Korea, and social and short-video content is inconsistently captioned. The three-way stops and honorific register that make Korean hard to lip-read leave a deaf viewer stranded wherever a real caption is missing.
Captio AI does not depend on the broadcaster or the platform. Point the phone at any screen — a live KBS bulletin, a Wavve drama, a YouTube clip — and read verbatim Korean captions in real time from the audio, whether or not that content was ever captioned for accessibility.
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
"The on-screen captions in variety shows are for effect, not for us, and streaming captions are inconsistent. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue verbatim from the audio. I follow the whole drama now."
"Live news captions still lag and the plain, tense, and aspirated stops look identical to me. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. The words finally line up with the picture."
"K-dramas drop English into Korean and the honorific endings stretch every line. Captio AI captions all of it from the audio. I stopped guessing at the plot and just watch."
"Korean YouTube auto-captions are unreliable and the batchim linking makes word boundaries impossible to see. Captio AI captions any clip accurately from the audio. It covers exactly the content the platforms miss."
"The on-screen captions in variety shows are for effect, not for us, and streaming captions are inconsistent. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue verbatim from the audio. I follow the whole drama now."
"Live news captions still lag and the plain, tense, and aspirated stops look identical to me. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. The words finally line up with the picture."
"K-dramas drop English into Korean and the honorific endings stretch every line. Captio AI captions all of it from the audio. I stopped guessing at the plot and just watch."
"Korean YouTube auto-captions are unreliable and the batchim linking makes word boundaries impossible to see. Captio AI captions any clip accurately from the audio. It covers exactly the content the platforms miss."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Watch anything in Korean.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store