Over the past few years, Apple has been pulling a bit of double-duty when it comes to iOS and iPadOS. Not only have we been getting regular updates, and new features in the company’s most popular platforms, but Apple is also making great strides to improve accessibility.
Back in May, ahead of WWDC ’22, and to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple revealed its plans for some new features that would be arriving in a future version of iOS. A few months later, we’ve learned that this wasn’t going to be part of a “point” release, but instead, the new accessibility features are arriving alongside iOS 16 and iPadOS 16.
One of the most exciting features introduced in this blog post is Live Captions. As you might suspect, this feature is designed for iPhone or iPad users that are deaf or hard of hearing. When enabled, a caption box will appear at the top of your screen, outputting whatever media or content is playing on your iPhone or iPad.
How to use Live Captions on iPhone and iPad
As is the case with most Accessibility features in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, Live Captions is not enabled by default. Instead, you need to go through and manually enable the feature in order to start using it. Here’s how you can use Live Captions on iPhone and iPad:
Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
Scroll down and tap Accessibility.
Scroll down until you reach the Hearing section.
Tap Live Captions (Beta).
Under System, tap the toggle next to Live Captions to the On position.
If necessary, you can also enable the following:
Live Captions in FaceTime
Live Captions in RTT
Once enabled, you’ll see a dialog box appear at the bottom. This is labeled as the Live Captions prompt, and whenever your iPhone or iPad recognizes voices beginning to speak (even your own), it will begin transcribing the content so you can read it.
From the dialog box itself, you’re provided with four different buttons: Hide, Pause, Microphone, and Expand. These all do exactly what you would expect them to, with the microphone working for those who want to have their own voice transcribed. And if you missed something that was said, the Expand button turns the Live Captions box into a full-screen window. You can then tap the same button again to shrink the dialog box back to its initial size.
Customize Live Captions Appearance
Along with Apple’s continued development of accessibility features, the company is also implementing a bit of customization for various features where possible. Live Captions falls under this umbrella of customizable features, as you can change how the dialog box appears on the screen. Here’s how to customize the appearance for Live Captions:
Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
Scroll down and tap Accessibility.
Scroll down until you reach the Hearing section.
Tap Live Captions (Beta).
Tap Appearance.
Go through and customize the following options:
Bold Text
Text Size
Text Color
Background Color
Idle Opacity (Reduces the visibility of the Live Captions button when not in use.
Tap the Back button in the top left corner to save your changes.
Exit the Settings app.
This might require a bit of tinkering to get things just right, as you aren’t provided with a preview of what the box will look like. At the time of this writing, Apple has only just released the first iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 Public Beta, so perhaps a preview will be added in a later build. But for the time being, you’re better off enabling Live Captions, than hiding the dialog box while tinkering around with how the captions are presented.
Toggle Live Captions From Control Center
One really cool and nifty feature is the ability to toggle various Accessibility features from Control Center. Even though Live Captions can be minimized to just a circle on the edge of your screen, it might not be something that you always want to have shown. Thanks to the Accessibility Shortcut functionality, you can add a Live Captions toggle right in Control Center. But before you can add the toggle, you’ll first need to create the Live Captions Accessibility Shortcut:
Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
Scroll down and tap Accessibility.
Scroll down until you reach the General section.
Select Accessibility Shortcut.
Scroll the list of options until you find Live Captions.
Tap Live Captions to select it.
Tap the <Back button to save your changes.
Once created, you can now add the Control Center button to toggle Live Captions on or off.
Open the Settings app.
Scroll down and tap Control Center.
Scroll down until you see Accessibility Shortcuts.
Tap the + icon to the left of the control.
Using the horizontal lines on the right, drag and drop the Accessibility Shortcut to change its order of appearance in the Control Center.
Tap <Settings in the top left corner to save your changes.
From there, just swipe down from the top right corner of your screen to show Control Center. Then, tap the Accessibility Shortcut, and if everything was set up correctly, then the Live Captions dialog box will appear. When you’re finished using Live Captions, just tap the same button again to toggle it off.
Use Shortcuts To Quickly Toggle Live Captions On and Off
We’ve covered Shortcuts and the various possibilities of what you can do from your iPhone, iPad, and now the Mac. That being said, it should come as no surprise that you can create a Shortcut to toggle Live Captions and add the button right to your Home Screen. Here’s how to use Live Captions on iPhone and iPad with the help of Shortcuts.
Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad.
Tap the Shortcuts section in the bottom toolbar.
In the top right corner, tap the + icon.
Tap the Add Action button.
Using the search box at the top, enter Live Captions.
Tap Set Live Captions (Beta).
From within the Action, tap Turn.
Select Toggle from the pop-up Operation menu.
Tap Done in the top right corner.
From the main Shortcuts page, tap the three horizontal dots in the newly-created shortcut.
At the top of the screen, tap the name of your Shortcut. (The default is: Set Live Captions (Beta)).
Next to the name of the Shortcut, tap the Share icon.
Scroll through the share sheet and tap Add to Home Screen.
If you want, you can change the name and icon of the Shortcut.
Tap Add in the top right corner.
Thanks to the fact that Shortcuts is deeply-integrated into iOS and iPadOS, it has more access than many other automation apps on your devices. This makes it so you can use Shortcuts to interact with various aspects of the mobile operating system such as toggling Accessibility features on or off.
Andrew is a freelance writer based on the East Coast of the US.
He has written for a variety of sites over the years, including iMore, Android Central, Phandroid, and a few others. Now, he spends his days working for an HVAC company, while moonlighting as a freelance writer at night.
I have an iPhone 13 Pro and cannot find the options listed here for Live Captions.