Summary
Windows Live Captions are capable of transcribing both microphone and internal computer audio for any application. This makes them a preferable choice when presenters will be using multiple applications or playing video clips. It is possible to position Windows Live Captions so they will not obscure on-screen materials, by scaling down the on-screen materials. However, when materials are displayed at full-screen, this scaling function does not work and captions will float over content, potentially obscuring information. This article describes work-around techniques for running PowerPoint and Google Slides in a windowed view that allows Windows Live Captions to shrink the materials while maximizing their screen usage.
Setting up Windows Live Captions
(These instructions are derived from the Microsoft Support Site article on Windows Live Captions. For complete instructions, visit the original article.)
To turn on live captions, do one of the following:
- Turn on Live captions in the quick settings (to open quick settings, select the battery, network, or volume icon on the task bar).
- Turn on the Live captions toggle in the quick settings Accessibility fly-out.
- Press Windows logo + Ctrl + L.
- Select Start > All apps > Accessibility > Live captions.
- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Captions and turn on the Live captions toggle.
When turned on the first time, live captions will ask for your consent to process voice data on your device and prompt you to download language files to be used by on-device speech recognition. If your language is not available, you can use another language during setup.
Turn on microphone captioning
- Select the Settings ⚙️button in the live captions window.
- Select Preferences and turn on the Include microphone audio option.
Adjust caption display settings
- Select the Settings ⚙️button in the live captions window.
- Select Preferences and select ⚙️Caption style to open the Captions Settings window
- In the Captions Settings window, find "Caption style" and click Edit
- Under the Text tab:
- Color: White
- Opacity: 100%
- Size: Large
- Font: Proportional sans serif
- Effects: None
- Under the Background Tab:
- Color: Black
- Opacity: 100%
- Under the Window tab:
- NOTE: As of June 2026, these settings do not do anything.
- This is a known issue that has not been resolved since the live captioning feature was introduced with Windows 11
- Color: Black
- Opacity: 100%
- Close the settings window
Change caption position
- Select the Settings ⚙️ button in the live captions window.
- Select Position
- Choose either Above screen or Below screen
- To show more lines of text in the captions window, increase the window size by using the mouse to drag the top or bottom edge of the caption window.
- Best practice is to have 3 lines of text clearly visible
Running PowerPoint in windowed view
- Open the PowerPoint file
- Open the Slide Show ribbon and click Set Up Slide Show
- Under Show type select "Browsed by an individual (window)" and click OK
- Start the presentation as you normally would
Running Google Slides in windowed view
- Open the link to the presentation in Google Chrome
- At the top right corner of the Chrome window, open the ⋮ More menu
- Select Cast, save, and share > Install page as app
- Use “Slides” as the app’s name and click Install. The app should automatically open.
- If the app doesn’t automatically open, you and run the app you just created by either opening the shortcut placed on your desktop or by navigating your browser back to Google Slides, opening the ⋮ More menu and selecting Cast, save, and share > Open in Slides
- In the app, open your presentation
- Open the Slideshow menu and select Presentation Display Options
- Uncheck Full screen and click Start slideshow
- Maximize the Slides app window using the ▢ button in the upper right corner
External resources
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