Swahili 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 Swahili tv & media
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Swahili 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.
Citizen TV, KBC, and TBC run live news that pre-generated captions cannot keep up with. Point Captio AI at your TV and read the Swahili as it is spoken, not several seconds behind the anchor.
Showmax and other platforms vary in subtitle quality and availability. Captio AI works as a consistent fallback for any Swahili show or film that ships with wrong, delayed, or missing captions.
YouTube auto-captions for Swahili are often inaccurate and most social video has none. Point Captio AI at your phone and read accurate Swahili captions for any clip.
A foreign film, a foreign documentary, a non-Swahili channel. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so anything becomes watchable in Swahili as it plays.
Not every cinema showing is captioned. Hold Captio AI near the audio and read real-time Swahili captions of the dialogue discreetly from your seat.
Most Swahili 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 Swahili is hard to understand
Prenasalized consonants
- Nasal-plus-stop sounds with almost no lip signal
- Swahili uses prenasalized consonants — clusters written mb, nd, ng, nj where a nasal glides straight into a stop. The nasal onset happens with little visible lip movement, so on a TV drama or a fast news read a deaf viewer sees the stop but not the nasal that changes the word.
Dialect range on screen
- Coastal, Tanzanian, and up-country varieties differ
- Swahili media spans coastal Kiswahili, Tanzanian standard, and the up-country Swahili of Kenya and Uganda. These varieties differ in rhythm and vocabulary, so a deaf viewer re-calibrates with each new show, and the face on a small screen is hard to lip-read anyway.
Noun-class prefixes
- Grammar riding on the front of every word
- Swahili marks its many noun classes with prefixes that ripple agreement across a whole sentence. This grammatical information sits on unstressed syllables at the start of words, and when a presenter speaks quickly the prefixes clip and blur on screen.
Swahili–English code-switching
- English dropped into Swahili content
- East African TV, film, and YouTube mix Swahili and English constantly. A deaf viewer must switch to English phonology on the key words, then back to Swahili, with no visual warning and no lip to read when the shot cuts away.
Arabic-origin sounds
- Borrowed consonants in formal vocabulary
- Formal and news Swahili draws on Arabic loanwords carrying sounds like 'gh' and 'kh' made far back in the mouth. These appear in the elevated language of a news read, and they give a lip-reader little to nothing to work with on screen.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEast African screens lean on sign-language news — and little else
Hearing loss is a large and rising burden in East Africa: disabling hearing loss across Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at around 4.55% of the population, and the WHO projects the number of people with hearing loss in Africa could reach 54 million by 2030. The Kenya 2019 census recorded over 150,000 deaf people aged over five, and a large Swahili-speaking population across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda shares the same media.
For deaf access, East African broadcasters have focused on sign-language interpreting during television newscasts — welcome, but limited to a small window of programming — while captioning and subtitling remain sparse. Broadcasters tend to prefer subtitles on cost grounds, but little of the schedule carries them; streaming subtitle quality varies, YouTube auto-captions for Swahili are unreliable, and most drama, entertainment, and social content is uncaptioned. Beyond the signed news bulletin, most of what plays on screen is inaccessible from the audio.
Captio AI does not depend on the broadcaster or the platform. Point the phone at any screen — a live Citizen TV bulletin, a Showmax drama, a YouTube clip — and read Swahili captions in real time, in the variety actually being spoken, 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
"There is signed news, but the rest of the schedule has nothing for us, and Swahili mixes in English constantly. Captio AI captions any programme from the audio, in real time. It covers everything the signed bulletin does not."
"Coastal Tanzanian Swahili is different from Kenyan Swahili, and streaming captions barely exist. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio, whatever the variety. I follow the whole show now."
"Swahili YouTube auto-captions are unreliable and the prenasalized sounds are invisible on the lips anyway. Captio AI captions any clip accurately from the audio. It changed how much I can watch."
"East African dramas rarely have captions. Captio AI captions the dialogue from the audio in real time. For the first time I follow the shows my family watches together."
"There is signed news, but the rest of the schedule has nothing for us, and Swahili mixes in English constantly. Captio AI captions any programme from the audio, in real time. It covers everything the signed bulletin does not."
"Coastal Tanzanian Swahili is different from Kenyan Swahili, and streaming captions barely exist. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio, whatever the variety. I follow the whole show now."
"Swahili YouTube auto-captions are unreliable and the prenasalized sounds are invisible on the lips anyway. Captio AI captions any clip accurately from the audio. It changed how much I can watch."
"East African dramas rarely have captions. Captio AI captions the dialogue from the audio in real time. For the first time I follow the shows my family watches together."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Watch anything in Swahili.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store