Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Punjabi live captions and productivity tool for tv & media

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Captio AI app showing live captions

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

📺Live TV — news, sport, events

PTC Punjabi and Punjabi news channels run live bulletins that pre-generated captions cannot keep up with. Point Captio AI at your TV and read the Punjabi as it is spoken, not several seconds behind the anchor.

🎬Streaming content

Chaupal and other platforms vary in subtitle quality and availability. Captio AI works as a consistent fallback for any Punjabi show or film that ships with wrong, delayed, or missing captions.

📱YouTube and social media

YouTube — where much Punjabi music and comedy lives — has auto-captions that are often inaccurate, and most social video has none. Point Captio AI at your phone and read accurate Punjabi captions for any clip.

🌍Foreign-language content

A foreign film, a foreign documentary, a non-Punjabi channel. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so anything becomes watchable in Punjabi as it plays.

🎭Cinema

Not every cinema showing is captioned. Hold Captio AI near the audio and read real-time Punjabi captions of the dialogue discreetly from your seat.

🎧Podcasts and audio content

Most Punjabi podcasts have no transcript. Hold Captio AI near the audio or upload a recording, and read the whole episode in writing.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Punjabi
90%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Captio AI in everyday use
Why Captio AI

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.

Punjabi

Why Punjabi is hard to understand

Lexical tone

  • The one Indo-Aryan language with tones the screen cannot show
  • Punjabi is unusual among Indo-Aryan languages in having developed lexical tones — level, rising, and falling — that separate otherwise identical words. Tone is carried in pitch, not on the mouth, so a deaf viewer watching a drama or a music video gets no visual cue for the tone that fixes the meaning.

Tone from lost aspiration

  • Historic breathy sounds now heard only as pitch
  • Punjabi's tones arose where old voiced-aspirated consonants collapsed, so a distinction other languages carry as a breathy consonant, Punjabi carries as pitch alone. On screen a deaf viewer has no way to see or infer this, and it can change a word entirely in a scene.

Retroflex and aspirated stops

  • Tongue-curl and puff-of-air sounds with no lip cue
  • Punjabi has retroflex consonants made with the tongue curled back and a set of aspirated stops distinguished by a puff of air. Neither is visible on screen, so a deaf viewer sees one shape for sounds that make different words in a song or a scene.

Cross-border varieties

  • Indian and Pakistani Punjabi differ on screen
  • Punjabi content spans eastern (Indian, Gurmukhi) and western (Pakistani, Shahmukhi) Punjabi, which differ in vocabulary and some sounds. A deaf viewer calibrated to one variety meets different lip shapes from a production made on the other side of the border.

Punjabi–English/Hindi code-switching

  • Other languages dropped into Punjabi content
  • Punjabi music, film, and YouTube mix in English and Hindi/Urdu terms constantly. A deaf viewer meets a different phonology on the key word, then returns to Punjabi, with no visual warning and no lip to read after a cut.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
The Challenge

Punjabi screens caption almost nothing for deaf viewers, on either side of the border

Punjabi is spoken across a border, and both sides carry heavy hearing loss burdens. In India, the World Health Organization estimates 63 million people have significant auditory loss; in Pakistan, an estimated 14.5 million people live with hearing loss, much of it congenital. India's Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act has prompted a limited captioning requirement — one programme a week per channel — but with live news, sport, and reality content exempted.

Little of what a Punjabi viewer actually watches is captioned. Punjabi music and comedy live largely on YouTube, where auto-captions are unreliable; drama and film captioning is inconsistent; and on the Pakistani side there is no established captioning framework at all. The constant mixing of Punjabi, Hindi, English, and Urdu across content is exactly where automated subtitles struggle most.

Captio AI does not depend on the broadcaster or the platform. Point the phone at any screen — a live PTC bulletin, a Punjabi film, a YouTube music video — and read Punjabi captions in real time, whether or not that content was ever captioned.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Privacy

What 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.

100% PRIVATE

Private by default

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Reviews

People love Captio AI

"Punjabi music lives on YouTube and the tones decide the word, which I cannot see at all. Captio AI captions the lyrics and speech from the audio, in real time. I finally follow the songs everyone is playing."

Harpreet S. 🇮🇳
harpreet.s***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Chandigarh — music-video viewer

"Punjabi serials mix in Hindi and English and rarely have good captions. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio. I follow the whole story now instead of guessing."

Simran K. 🇮🇳
simran.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, Ludhiana — serial viewer

"On the Pakistani side there are no captions for us at all, and western and eastern Punjabi differ. Captio AI captions the dialogue from the audio in real time. It covers exactly what nothing else does."

Bilal A. 🇵🇰
bilal.a***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Lahore — film viewer

"Live Punjabi news has no captions and the retroflex sounds are invisible. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. I read the news as it is read."

Gurpreet D. 🇮🇳
gurpreet.d***@gmail.com
Deaf, Amritsar — live news viewer

"Punjabi music lives on YouTube and the tones decide the word, which I cannot see at all. Captio AI captions the lyrics and speech from the audio, in real time. I finally follow the songs everyone is playing."

Harpreet S. 🇮🇳
harpreet.s***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Chandigarh — music-video viewer

"Punjabi serials mix in Hindi and English and rarely have good captions. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio. I follow the whole story now instead of guessing."

Simran K. 🇮🇳
simran.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, Ludhiana — serial viewer

"On the Pakistani side there are no captions for us at all, and western and eastern Punjabi differ. Captio AI captions the dialogue from the audio in real time. It covers exactly what nothing else does."

Bilal A. 🇵🇰
bilal.a***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Lahore — film viewer

"Live Punjabi news has no captions and the retroflex sounds are invisible. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. I read the news as it is read."

Gurpreet D. 🇮🇳
gurpreet.d***@gmail.com
Deaf, Amritsar — live news viewer

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Watch anything in Punjabi.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store