Live captions aren’t appearing

No captions at all

1. Is the session actually live? The console shows this — press Go live if not.
2. Is audio reaching the console? Speak and watch for movement on the input.
3. Is the right input selected? A laptop that switched to its built-in microphone when something was unplugged is the classic cause.
4. Is the machine online? Captioning needs a live internet connection throughout.
5. Did the session end itself? After 10 minutes without audio, or 45 minutes paused, it ends automatically — the console warns first. Press Go live to start again.
6. Does the console show Upgrade Live Translation where Go live should be? Your translation hours for the period are used up; if they run out mid-service the session ends on its own.
7. Does the console show Translation paused? Someone paused translation, for music or a prayer — press Resume translation on the console.
8. More fixes for the console itself are in Fix a Live Translation session that is not working.

Captions appear but are wrong

• Poor audio. Distant microphones, room echo and a noisy hall all produce exactly this. A feed from the sound desk fixes it; nothing in the settings will.
• Wrong spoken language. If the system thinks it is hearing a different language, output is nonsense — see Choose translation languages.
• Unusual names and words. These can be taught in advance under Settings → Captions → Custom vocabulary, and are worth doing for the ones your church uses every week.

Guests cannot see them

• Is the session live? Nothing appears on a guest’s phone until it is.
• Are they on the current link? The guest link stays the same every week unless someone pressed Regenerate — after that, old links and printed QR codes show “This caption link isn’t available”.
• Are they reading the language they expect? The caption page picks one for them — their last choice, the link’s language, or their phone’s — and they can change it by tapping the language name on the page.
• Does the phone say “This service is full”? The service has reached its listener limit; the page joins by itself when a place frees up.
• Is the venue’s wifi coping? Two hundred phones on one access point is its own problem.
• For what each message on a guest’s phone means, see Read live captions on your phone.

A projector or video mixer shows nothing

• Was the overlay link added as a web item (a browser source, a web object, a website item)? The captions feature built into presentation software connects to a different service and stays blank whatever link is pasted into it.
• Add &preview=1 to the end of the link while testing. A status box then says whether the link is accepted, whether a session is running and whether captions are arriving.
• Does the web item cover the whole slide? A short item cuts rows off the bottom.
• A link shows only the language it was made with. If the service is not producing that language — or someone pressed Regenerate on the overlay link — the screen stays blank. The &preview=1 status box, or the Test button on the Overlay link card, tells you which.
• The per-program steps are in Show captions on a screen or in your video mixer.