Tamil 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 Tamil tv & media
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Tamil 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.
Sun TV and Tamil news channels run live bulletins and debates that pre-generated captions cannot keep up with — and live news is exempt from India's captioning rules anyway. Point Captio AI at your TV and read the Tamil as it is spoken.
Sun NXT, aha Tamil, and other platforms vary in subtitle quality and availability. Captio AI works as a consistent fallback for any Tamil show or film that ships with wrong, delayed, or missing captions.
YouTube auto-captions for Tamil are often inaccurate and most social video has none. Point Captio AI at your phone and read accurate Tamil captions for any clip.
A foreign film, a foreign documentary, a non-Tamil channel. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so anything becomes watchable in Tamil as it plays.
Not every cinema showing is captioned. Hold Captio AI near the audio and read real-time Tamil captions of the Kollywood dialogue discreetly from your seat.
Most Tamil 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 Tamil is hard to understand
Literary–spoken diglossia
- News Tamil and serial Tamil are two varieties
- Tamil is deeply diglossic: news and formal programming use centamil, the formal literary variety, while serials and films use colloquial koduntamil. A deaf viewer who lip-reads everyday Tamil meets a news read in a register with different verb forms and vocabulary, so familiar words take unfamiliar shapes on screen.
Retroflex series
- A full set of tongue-curl sounds invisible on screen
- Tamil has a complete retroflex series — ʈ, ɖ, ɳ, ɭ, ɻ — made by curling the tongue back. From a distant TV or a small phone these give no lip cue, so a deaf viewer sees the same shape for dental, alveolar, and retroflex sounds that make different words in a scene.
Multiple rhotics and laterals
- Sounds English lacks, hard to tell apart on screen
- Tamil distinguishes several r-like and l-like sounds — including retroflex ones — that look nearly identical on the lips. In a fast serial or a Kollywood song sequence, the fine distinctions that separate two words are exactly the ones a deaf viewer cannot recover from a face.
Colloquial reduction
- Casual Tamil elides consonants and nasalises vowels
- In fast spoken Tamil, intervocalic consonants drop, clusters simplify, and vowels nasalise. During a lively serial or a comedy scene the careful enunciation gives way to reduced, run-together speech that offers a deaf viewer little visual footing.
Tamil–English code-switching
- English dropped into Tamil content
- Tamil serials, films, and YouTube mix English terms into Tamil constantly, especially urban content. A deaf viewer must switch to English phonology on the key words, then back to Tamil, with no visual warning and no lip to read after a fast cut.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreIndia mandates some captions — but not for Tamil's live TV and cinema
India carries one of the world's largest hearing loss burdens: the World Health Organization estimates 63 million people in India have significant auditory loss, and Tamil is spoken by tens of millions across Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Following the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act of 2016, the government has moved to require every TV channel to run at least one programme a week with subtitles or captioning.
But the rules leave out most of what a Tamil viewer actually watches. Live news, debates, reality shows, and award shows are explicitly exempted, and the baseline — one captioned programme a week — is a fraction of a channel's output. Tamil cinema is one of India's largest film industries, yet captioned showings are rare; the daily serials on Sun TV, streaming films, and the constant Tamil–English mixing of urban content are largely uncaptioned or inconsistently so.
Captio AI does not depend on the broadcaster or the platform. Point the phone at any screen — a live Tamil news debate, a Sun TV serial, a Kollywood film — and read Tamil 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
"Kollywood films rarely have captioned showings, and the dialogue mixes in English. I hold Captio AI on my knee and read the lines from my seat. I stopped waiting for a subtitled home release to watch a film."
"Sun TV serials rarely have good captions and the retroflex sounds are invisible on the lips. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio, in real time. I follow the whole story now."
"Sri Lankan Tamil news has no captions and the news register is different from everyday Tamil. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. I read the news as it is read."
"Tamil YouTube auto-captions are a mess and the diglossia trips me up anyway. Captio AI captions any clip accurately from the audio. It covers exactly the content the platforms do not."
"Kollywood films rarely have captioned showings, and the dialogue mixes in English. I hold Captio AI on my knee and read the lines from my seat. I stopped waiting for a subtitled home release to watch a film."
"Sun TV serials rarely have good captions and the retroflex sounds are invisible on the lips. Captio AI captions the actual dialogue from the audio, in real time. I follow the whole story now."
"Sri Lankan Tamil news has no captions and the news register is different from everyday Tamil. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. I read the news as it is read."
"Tamil YouTube auto-captions are a mess and the diglossia trips me up anyway. Captio AI captions any clip accurately from the audio. It covers exactly the content the platforms do not."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Watch anything in Tamil.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store