How to customize your caption settings for any purpose

Accessibility features empower every person, no matter their individual abilities, to do what they love and discover new things. The hearing features on Windows 11 allow you to choose the best caption settings for your specific needs.

How to access caption settings in Windows 11

Captions are an incredibly useful tool, whether you’re hard of hearing, watching something in a foreign language, or just having trouble understanding what’s being said. If you want to know how to caption in Windows 11, follow these simple steps:

1. Open the Start Menu or select the Windows logo key.
2. Navigate to Settings.
3. Select Accessibility.
4. Choose Captions and toggle on Live captions.
5. Under Caption style, select one of four styles: White on black, Small caps, Large text, or Yellow on blue. When you choose one, a preview will appear.
6. Below the preview, select Edit to personalize your preference by choosing from several text, background, and window options.

Live captions

Live captions are integrated into the Windows 11 desktop interface and provide captions while you’re working in apps such as Teams. These captions can even appear when you’re not connected to the internet.

To enable Live captions on your device, you have a few options:

• Use a keyboard shortcut: Windows logo key + Ctrl + L
• Toggle on Live captions after navigating to the Captions controls in Accessibility settings

Personalize caption settings

Once you’ve enabled Live captions, you’ll notice that the window where the captions appear has a settings button that looks like a little gear. From there, adjust your captions to suit your needs in any of these ways:

• Position the caption window within the screen.
• Adjust caption colors to make them easier to read.
• Connect your microphone to caption your own speech.

Live captioning supports a number of languages, including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and various English dialects.

Another feature of Windows 11 is the availability of a visual alternative to sounds. If you’re hard of hearing, you may not notice the soft ding of a notification. In this situation, you can open your Audio settings and scroll down to Show audio alerts visually. Instead of making a sound, your Windows device will flash an active window or even the entire screen to properly alert you of a notification. Choose the alert that works best for you and change it whenever you like.

Whether you want to make caption text yellow with a blue background or use live call transcription, Microsoft is committed to creating a more equitable world with features like these. Built-in settings in Windows 11 make it easier for everyone to create, learn, and explore.