Russian 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 Russian tv & media
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Russian 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.
Channel One and Rossiya run live news that pre-generated captions lag behind. Point Captio AI at your TV and read the Russian as it is spoken, not several seconds behind the anchor.
Kinopoisk, ivi, and other platforms vary in subtitle quality and availability. Captio AI works as a consistent fallback for any Russian show or film that ships with wrong, delayed, or missing captions.
YouTube auto-captions for Russian are often inaccurate and most social video has none. Point Captio AI at your phone and read accurate Russian captions for any clip.
A foreign film, a foreign documentary voiced over in Russian, a non-Russian channel. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so anything becomes watchable in Russian as it plays.
Not every cinema showing is captioned. Hold Captio AI near the audio and read real-time Russian captions of the dialogue discreetly from your seat.
Most Russian 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
word 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 Russian is hard to understand
Palatalization
- Hard and soft consonants that look the same
- Russian pairs almost every consonant with a palatalized 'soft' counterpart, and the contrast changes meaning. The tongue-body raising that softens a consonant is barely visible from the front, so on a TV drama or a news read a deaf viewer sees the same mouth for consonants that make different words.
Vowel reduction (akanye)
- Unstressed o and a merge into one weak vowel
- Russian reduces unstressed vowels heavily — unstressed 'o' and 'a' collapse into a single weak sound. Words look different from their written form, and at broadcast pace the reduced vowels give a deaf viewer little to segment a word by on screen.
Dubbing and voiceover
- Foreign content voiced over, lips never match
- Russia dubs and voices over most foreign film and TV — often with a single narrator over the original audio — so the words a viewer hears never match the lips on screen. For a deaf viewer relying on lip-reading, foreign content is impossible to follow from the face.
Consonant clusters
- Dense clusters compressed at speed
- Russian permits long consonant clusters that compress further in fast speech. On a rapid news read or a drama exchange, these run together into a stream that offers a deaf viewer almost no visual footing on a small screen.
Fast news and drama speech
- Anchors and characters move at pace
- Russian news anchors read quickly and drama dialogue overlaps, and the camera cuts away from the speaker constantly. In this fast, connected speech with the mouth often out of frame, a deaf viewer loses the thread with no way to ask for a repeat.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreRussian screens caption little — and dub almost everything foreign
Hearing loss is widespread but under-served in Russia: the Global Burden of Disease Study estimates that around 9 million Russians aged 15 and over have disabling hearing loss, far above the figures in official diagnoses, because national statistics do not systematically collect hearing-health data. Captioning of Russian television for deaf viewers is limited and inconsistent, and dedicated subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are still emerging rather than established.
Foreign content is a particular barrier. Russia dubs and voices over most foreign film and television — frequently with a single narrator laid over the original soundtrack — so a deaf viewer gets neither matching lips nor a caption. Live news carries no reliable real-time captions, streaming subtitle quality varies, and social and short-video content is largely uncaptioned. For a deaf Russian viewer, much of what plays on any screen is inaccessible from the picture alone.
Captio AI does not depend on the broadcaster or the platform. Point the phone at any screen — a live Channel One bulletin, a voiced-over foreign film, a YouTube clip — and read Russian captions in real time from the audio, whether or not that content was ever captioned.
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
"Foreign films here get a voiceover, so the lips are English and the sound is Russian — impossible for me. Captio AI captions the Russian soundtrack from the audio. For the first time I can watch a dubbed film and follow it."
"Channel One live news has no captions that match the picture and the anchor reads fast with all those reduced vowels. Captio AI captions it in real time. I read the news as it is read."
"Russian streaming captions are hit and miss, and the soft consonants look identical to me on screen. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio. I follow the drama now instead of guessing."
"Russian YouTube auto-captions are unreliable and most clips have none. Captio AI captions any video accurately in real time. It covers the content the platforms never do."
"Foreign films here get a voiceover, so the lips are English and the sound is Russian — impossible for me. Captio AI captions the Russian soundtrack from the audio. For the first time I can watch a dubbed film and follow it."
"Channel One live news has no captions that match the picture and the anchor reads fast with all those reduced vowels. Captio AI captions it in real time. I read the news as it is read."
"Russian streaming captions are hit and miss, and the soft consonants look identical to me on screen. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio. I follow the drama now instead of guessing."
"Russian YouTube auto-captions are unreliable and most clips have none. Captio AI captions any video accurately in real time. It covers the content the platforms never do."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Watch anything in Russian.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store