Turn a video or an audio file into captions on your Mac - transcribe, correct the wording, time it properly, style it, and export the format the next tool expects. Nothing is uploaded at any stage.
Start on Universal Lite, which ships with the app and handles everyday clips. Move to Universal Compact for longer talking-head video, and to Universal Plus or Max when the audio is genuinely hard - a heavy accent, several people talking, music under the dialogue. On macOS 26 the Instant engine uses the system recogniser and starts with no download at all, in ten languages.
No. A speech model is bundled inside the app, which is the whole point of Universal Lite existing. You can subtitle something the minute it opens.
Video as MP4, MOV or M4V, and plain audio as MP3, M4A or WAV. Drag it anywhere in the window. Audio-only files still produce timed captions, which is what you want if the video is being cut elsewhere.
It is how fast a line asks the viewer to read. Broadcast subtitlers use it as the standard sanity check, because a caption can be perfectly accurate and still flash past unread. The editor shows it per line so you can see which ones need splitting or shortening rather than guessing.
Click a line to jump to that moment in the video, then snap the timing to the playhead. Merge two lines that were split mid-sentence, or split one that runs too long. The waveform timeline is there to make the boundaries visible rather than approximate.
Burn them in for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, which ignore subtitle files. Export a file for YouTube, a client handover or an editing timeline - SRT is read by Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and VLC.
SRT is the plain, universal one: text and timings, no styling. VTT is the web equivalent, for HTML5 players. ASS carries your fonts, colours, position and karaoke tags, so it is the one to use when the look matters and the player supports it. TXT is a transcript with no timecodes at all.
It uses the translation built into macOS, which runs on device and costs nothing per word. Translate a finished transcript and every line stays editable afterwards - worth doing, because machine translation of spoken language usually needs a pass by someone who speaks it.
Start from one of the six presets - Classic, Bold Pop, Karaoke, Neon, Minimal or Cinema - then change font, size, colour, shadow, background and position. The preview updates on the video as it plays, so you are judging it in motion rather than on a still.
Transcription, the full editor, every style, and three subtitle file exports. Burned-in video carries a small watermark. Pro removes the watermark, makes exports unlimited, and adds the larger engines for the hardest audio.
Generate, edit, style and export subtitles for video on Mac - SRT, VTT, ASS or burned in, entirely on device.
The workflow for something going to TikTok, Reels or Shorts, where the file has to carry the captions itself.
Keep captions clear of the lower third of the frame. Every short-form platform puts its own interface there, and a caption behind a username is a caption nobody reads.
Try this in AI Subtitle Generator: SRT →Here the deliverable is the file, and it has to drop into their timeline without argument.
If the cut changes after you deliver, the SRT is wrong from the first edit point onwards. Re-run against the new cut rather than nudging timings by hand.
Try this in AI Subtitle Generator: SRT →The audio file is the input and the transcript, not the captions, is the output.
A published transcript is the cheapest search visibility a podcast gets, because audio is otherwise invisible to every search engine.
Try this in AI Subtitle Generator: SRT →The case where an upload-based service is not an option at all.
This is the practical argument for on-device work. It is not that a cloud service is careless - it is that "the footage never left this Mac" is a statement you can make without qualifying it.
Try this in AI Subtitle Generator: SRT →Our support team usually replies within one business day.
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