Apple Live Captions vs Hearing Buddy
One is a free caption overlay built into your iPhone. The other is a captioning app built around keeping the conversation. They're better together than against each other — here's the honest breakdown.
By Lilly Seay · Updated July 6, 2026
Live Captions is genuinely great at what Hearing Buddy can't do: it captions phone calls, FaceTime, and any app's audio, free, with nothing to install. What it doesn't do is remember — in-person captions vanish when the window closes, and call captions are cleared within an hour at most. Hearing Buddy is built around the conversation itself: saved transcripts, free group captions between iPhones in the same room, on-device translation, and a tap on your Apple Watch when someone says your name. Most people who love one still keep the other.
Choose Hearing Buddy if…
- You want a saved transcript of every conversation — scroll back, copy, and share it days later
- Your conversations are in person: Buddy Mode captions everyone at the table across iPhones, free, with no internet needed
- You want captions translated live into 10 languages, processed entirely on your phone
- You want a wrist tap when someone says your name or asks you a question
- You join conversations late and want your Buddy to catch you up with a summary
Choose Apple Live Captions if…
- You need captions for phone or FaceTime calls — Live Captions does this; microphone apps like Hearing Buddy can't access call audio
- You want captions for other apps' audio — videos, podcasts, voice notes, anything your device plays
- Your iPhone can't run iOS 26 — Live Captions works back to iOS 16 on iPhone 11 or later, and also lives on iPad, Apple silicon Macs, and Vision Pro
- You want zero setup: it's already in Settings, completely free, one toggle away
- You caption in one of its 17 locales that Hearing Buddy doesn't cover yet — like Cantonese
Side by side
| Feature |  Hearing Buddy | Apple Live Captions |
|---|---|---|
| Free to use | Unlimited free captions No meters or session caps; Buddy+ extras are optional | Free, built into iOS Nothing to install — a Settings toggle, no paid tier at all |
| Where your audio is processed | 100% on your iPhone No audio ever leaves your phone | On-device too Apple: "Audio is processed on device." Genuine parity — both keep conversations off the internet |
| Saved transcript history | Every conversation, free Saved on your phone — copy and share any of it, anytime | No automatic history The overlay hides when audio stops; iOS 26 adds a manual Copy Captions button, but nothing survives Clear All |
| Captions phone & FaceTime calls | Not possible Microphone apps can't access call audio — this is Live Captions' home turf | Yes Call captions are kept 1 minute or up to 1 hour after the call, then cleared; the 1-hour option plays a transcription announcement to everyone on the call |
| Captions other apps' audio | Mic audio only Hearing Buddy captions the room, not your phone's internal audio | Yes, system-wide Videos, podcasts, voice messages — any app's sound |
| Group conversations on multiple phones | Buddy Mode — free iPhones in the same room connect directly; everyone's words in one timeline, attributed by name in their color, no internet required | Not offered One overlay on one device |
| Tells voices apart | Speaker Labels, with Buddy+ Colors tell up to four voices apart in solo sessions — no voice training, nothing stored, resets every session | Not offered All speech appears as one unattributed stream |
| Live translation | 10 languages, on-device Free inside Buddy Mode; part of Buddy+ for solo sessions — works offline | Transcription only Captions what it hears in the spoken language; never translates |
| Caption languages | 8 languages Plus live translation into 10 reading languages | 17 locales English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese variants as of iOS 26 |
| Apple Watch | Name & question alerts, with Buddy+ A tap on your wrist when someone says your name or asks you something — unique in the category | Caption mirroring watchOS 26 shows Live Captions on a paired Watch during a Live Listen session — reading, not alerts |
| Conversation summaries | Yes, with Buddy+ Your Buddy catches you up when you join mid-conversation | Not offered |
| Devices & OS support | iPhone, Watch, Mac & Vision Pro All-Apple; iPhone requires iOS 26 or later | iPhone 11 or later, back to iOS 16 Also on supported iPads, Apple silicon Macs, and Apple Vision Pro |
Live Captions details verified from Apple's iPhone, iPad, and Mac support guides and Apple's iOS feature-availability page on July 6, 2026. iOS updates change these details — always confirm against Apple's current documentation.
What Actually Separates Them
Captions that outlive the moment
Live Captions is designed as a live overlay, not a record. The caption window hides itself when no audio is detected, a Clear All button wipes everything, and there is no transcript history to open later. iOS 26 added a genuinely useful manual Copy Captions button for pasting into Notes or Messages — but nothing is ever saved automatically, and once cleared, it's gone.
Call captions are even more fleeting, by design: with Keep Call Captions set to 1 Minute, everything clears the moment the call ends and copying or screenshots are blocked entirely. Set to 1 Hour, you get sixty minutes to copy the transcript — and everyone on the call hears "This call is being transcribed" when it starts.
Hearing Buddy treats the transcript as the whole point. Every conversation is saved on your phone, free — you can scroll back through the doctor's appointment on the drive home, copy the address someone rattled off, or share what was decided with someone who missed it. Background listening even keeps captions running while you glance at another app.
One overlay vs the whole table
Live Captions captions one stream of audio on one device — perfect for a video or a call, but at a group dinner every voice lands in the same unattributed wall of text, with no way to tell who said what.
Buddy Mode is free group captioning between iPhones in the same room: everyone opens Hearing Buddy, joins the people nearby, and each person's words merge into one caption timeline, attributed by name in their own buddy color. The phones connect directly to each other — no accounts, no servers, and it keeps working with no internet at all.
For one-phone conversations, Buddy+ adds Speaker Labels: colors that tell up to four voices apart without training anyone's voice. Nothing is recorded or stored — labels reset when the session ends.
Reading in your own language
Live Captions transcribes in 17 locales as of iOS 26 — a big expansion from its English-only early days — but it only transcribes. If the room is speaking Spanish and you read best in English, the overlay shows you Spanish.
Hearing Buddy translates captions live into any of 10 reading languages — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified or Traditional Chinese — using language packs that run entirely on your iPhone — and, like Live Captions, each language is a one-time download that works fully offline afterward. Inside Buddy Mode, translation is free and each person reads the same conversation in their own language; translating your solo captions is part of Buddy+.
A Watch that taps you, not just shows you
Apple's Watch story is mirroring: with watchOS 26, you can view Live Captions of what your iPhone hears on a paired Apple Watch during a Live Listen session. That's reading text on a smaller screen.
Hearing Buddy's Watch feature works the other way around: with Buddy+, your wrist taps you when someone says your name or asks you a question — so you can stay present in the room instead of watching a screen, trusting that you'll be flagged the moment you're needed. No other captioning app offers it.
Buddy+ also adds conversation summaries — your Buddy catches you up on what a conversation is about and its mood when you join late — for $59.99 a year. The captions themselves stay free either way.
When Apple Live Captions Is the Better Choice
Live Captions is a thoughtfully built accessibility feature, and for some jobs it's simply the right tool — sometimes the only tool. We'd rather you know exactly when:
The sound is coming from your phone
Phone calls, FaceTime, videos, podcasts, voice messages — Live Captions captions your device's own audio system-wide. Microphone apps like Hearing Buddy physically can't access call audio, so for captioned calls, Live Captions (or a dedicated call-captioning service) is the answer.
Your device can't run iOS 26 — or isn't an iPhone
Live Captions reaches back to iOS 16 on iPhone 11 or later, and also runs on supported iPads, Apple silicon Macs, and Apple Vision Pro. Hearing Buddy requires iOS 26 on iPhone. If your device can't update that far, Live Captions is the built-in option that already works.
You want captions right now, with zero setup
There's nothing to download from the App Store — just Settings, Accessibility, Live Captions, toggle on. (The first enable downloads language data, which needs an internet connection once; after that it runs on-device.) For instant, no-commitment captions, built-in wins.
You need one of its 17 locales
As of iOS 26, Live Captions covers English (US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Singapore), Spanish (US, Mexico, Spain), French (France, Canada), German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese. Hearing Buddy currently captions 8 languages — if yours is on Apple's list and not ours, use theirs.
What You'll Actually Pay
- Unlimited real-time captions — free
- Buddy Mode group captions — free
- Background listening & transcript history — free
- Buddy+: $59.99/year
- Buddy+ adds Watch alerts, summaries, Speaker Labels, solo translation, and Buddy personalities
- Included with iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS
- No subscription, no in-app purchases, nothing to install
- One-time language download needs an internet connection
- Call captions are kept 1 minute or up to 1 hour — never longer
- Requires iPhone 11 or later (available back to iOS 16)
Details checked July 6, 2026 against Apple's support guides for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Both are free — this comparison is about what each one does, not what it costs.
Trying Hearing Buddy takes about a minute
This isn't an either/or. Live Captions stays right where it is in Settings — most people simply add Hearing Buddy alongside it.
Download free
No account, no email, no credit card — the App Store is the only signup there is.
Tap the mic
Captions start instantly, and this time they're saved. No onboarding maze, no calibration.
Keep Live Captions on
Use it for calls, FaceTime, and app audio — and Hearing Buddy for the conversations happening around you. They cover each other's gaps.
Questions & answers
The usual causes: (1) Live Captions requires iPhone 11 or later — it isn't available on older models. (2) Your language needs to be one of the supported locales; on older iOS versions the toggle stays hidden if your primary language isn't supported. (3) The first time you turn it on (Settings > Accessibility > Live Captions), your iPhone downloads language data, which needs an internet connection — captions won't start until that finishes. (4) The caption window hides itself automatically when no audio is detected, which can look like it stopped working. And if you can't copy or screenshot call captions, that's by design unless Keep Call Captions was set to 1 Hour before the call.
There's no automatic way — Live Captions keeps no history. As of iOS 26 you can manually tap Copy Captions on non-call captions and paste them into Notes or Messages, but anything cleared (or hidden after the conversation) is gone. Call captions are stricter: with Keep Call Captions set to 1 Minute, copying and screenshots are blocked and everything clears when the call ends; the 1 Hour setting allows copying for an hour afterward, and plays a "This call is being transcribed" announcement to everyone on the call. If you want conversations saved automatically, that's exactly what Hearing Buddy does — every session is stored on your phone, free.
Yes — phone calls and FaceTime, right on the call screen. That's something Hearing Buddy can't do: microphone apps have no access to call audio. Just know the captions are temporary — kept for at most one hour after the call (or cleared immediately, depending on your Keep Call Captions setting). For everyday captioned calling with a permanent record, dedicated call-captioning services are also worth a look.
Completely. It's a built-in accessibility feature of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS — no purchase, no subscription, no app to install. Hearing Buddy's live captions are also free and unlimited; its optional Buddy+ tier ($59.99/year) adds extras like Apple Watch alerts, conversation summaries, Speaker Labels, and solo translation.
As of iOS 26, 17 locales: English (US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Singapore), Spanish (US, Mexico, Spain), French (France, Canada), German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese (mainland China, Taiwan), and Cantonese (mainland China, Hong Kong). It transcribes but never translates. Hearing Buddy captions 8 languages and can translate captions live into 10 reading languages, entirely on your phone.
No — and we won't pretend otherwise. Both process audio entirely on your device: Apple's documentation states "Audio is processed on device," and Hearing Buddy never sends audio off your iPhone either. On privacy, this one is a genuine tie. The differences are elsewhere: what gets captioned, what gets kept, and what happens when more than one person is talking.
Partly. With watchOS 26, you can view Live Captions of what your iPhone hears on a paired Apple Watch during a Live Listen session — it mirrors the captions to your wrist. Hearing Buddy's Watch feature is different: instead of showing you everything, Buddy+ taps your wrist specifically when someone says your name or asks you a question, so you can stay engaged in the room and trust you'll be flagged when it matters.
Honestly: both. They barely overlap. Live Captions is the right tool for phone calls, FaceTime, and captioning your phone's own audio — things Hearing Buddy can't touch. Hearing Buddy is built for the conversations happening around you: saved transcripts, free Buddy Mode group captions across iPhones, on-device translation, Watch alerts, and summaries. Live Captions is already on your phone, and Hearing Buddy is free to add next to it.
Captions shouldn't disappear.
Live Captions shows you the words. Hearing Buddy keeps them — saved, shareable, translated, with a tap on your wrist when you're needed. Free, no account, no strings.
Available on iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac & Vision Pro
Apple, iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple Vision Pro, FaceTime, Live Listen, and Live Captions are trademarks of Apple Inc. Hearing Buddy is an independent app and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Apple Inc. All Live Captions details on this page were verified on July 6, 2026 from Apple's support documentation and feature-availability pages; iOS updates change these details, so please confirm with Apple's current documentation. This page reflects our honest assessment — and yes, we tell you when Live Captions is the better choice.