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Speakers

Each voice gets a label, Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on. Tap a label to give it a name; the TV updates too.
  • Two labels for one person? Tap the newer one and choose Same person as…. Their lines, and what they say next, show as the earlier speaker. Tap the label again to undo it.
  • Someone comes back. When captions start again, a voice heard earlier in the conversation is recognized once it has said a few seconds, and shown with its name. Voice patterns are kept only for that conversation, and never saved. Turn this off in Menu → Speech.
  • Someone reading the captions aloud. When a line repeats what someone else just said, it folds away behind a Read back button instead of showing twice. Mark the person who reads the captions aloud (tap their label) and even short repeats fold.

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Replies

Type a reply at the bottom, or tap a quick reply. It shows in the conversation and on the TV, and can be read aloud (Menu → Replies). While a reply is read aloud, captions keep listening: the reply’s own voice is left out, and anyone talking over it is still captioned. Tap a reply to show it full screen.

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Sounds in the captions

Applause shows as [applause] and music as [music], in italics on a line of their own, where they happened, as TV captions do. Music is marked once a song, not again through its quiet moments.

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Words that may be misheard

A wavy underline marks a word the speech service wasn’t sure of. To make names and terms come out right, add them to Menu → Languages → Names and words to recognize, and give the topic under About this conversation. Turn the underline off in Menu → Display.

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Swear words

Swear words show as their first letter and stars, such as f***, in the app, on TVs, and everywhere else Readout shows what’s said. Menu → Languages → Hide swear words shows every word instead, or hides them on TVs only. Saved conversations and exports keep every word.

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The microphone

Menu → Speech → Microphone chooses which of the device’s microphones captions listen with, such as a USB or clip-on microphone. Switching keeps captions going. If it’s unplugged, captions use the device’s usual microphone and say so.

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Find anything

Everything is in the Menu, with a search box at the top: type a few letters, such as “text size” or “bell”, and it shows where each is. On a computer, ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) opens it from the captions.