Understand
What others say turns into subtitles in your language as they speak. It works out which language they’re speaking; speech recognition runs entirely on your Mac.
Cicada: live subtitles, interpreting and meeting notes for any call or stream
Any call, any stream,
no language barrier.
Understand. Speak up. Remember.
Cicada is a Mac app
Have a look on your phone first. Send this page to your Mac to download it for free.
Live notesUpdating
Decision · Beta ships to everyone next Thursday
Agenda · Keynote after the break
To-do · Collect questions from the chat
Hold right ⌥ and speak English
“We can send feedback before Thursday.”
They hear: “我们可以在周四之前给反馈。”
Works in all of these, as long as your Mac plays the sound
- Zoom
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Meet
- Lark
- Tencent Meeting
- X Spaces
- YouTube Live
- Twitch
- Discord
- Webex
- DingTalk
- Podcasts
Teams and Meet have captions?
Only inside their own apps.
X Spaces, YouTube Live, Discord and podcasts don’t. Cicada listens to everything your Mac plays: no bot joins the call, and nobody else installs anything.
Where it works
Built-inOnly in that app’s own meetings
CicadaAny app, any web page, any stream
Who has to agree
Built-inThe host turns it on, often on a paid plan
CicadaYou turn it on yourself; nobody else is affected
Can you speak up
Built-inMostly captions only
CicadaHold right ⌥ and speak; they hear their language
Speak up
Hold right ⌥ and talk. When you let go, it’s translated into their language and spoken through a virtual microphone. Works in any app you can speak in.
Remember
Notes written while the meeting runs: key points, decisions, to-dos and “what did I miss”. Afterwards you keep a bilingual record, exportable to Markdown, Word and SRT.
Subtitles work everywhere; interpreting needs a place where you can speak, like a call or a Space. AI notes and natural voices use your own Ling key, which comes with ¥10 of free credit every month. Get started in three steps →
Privacy and permissions
What each permission is for →On your Mac
Audio becomes text on your Mac
Recordings and meeting records stay on your own disk. The only things sent out are the recognized text (for translation and notes) and, when you use interpreting, the few sentences you speak while holding the key.
Permissions
Asked only when needed, optional where possible
System audio is for subtitles; the microphone records only while you hold the talk key; Input Monitoring only watches the right ⌥ (not needed with a key combination). The notes window stays hidden when you share your screen.
Open
No tracking, open source
It only connects to the translation service, your own Ling key, the official BlackHole download and GitHub. No analytics and no servers of our own. Installers can be checked against their SHA-256.
What’s next
Tell us what you need →Next · Mac
Record what I say, tell speakers apart
What you say in the meeting goes into the notes too. Support back to macOS 14.4. Proper signing, so no more “Open Anyway” on first launch. Several speakers on the other side told apart, with to-dos showing who said them. Notes written by an on-device model, with no key needed.
Later
Voice recognition, Windows and Android
Remember the voices of colleagues you meet often and recognize them next time; voiceprints stay on your Mac. A full version for Windows. Android can’t capture call audio, so it starts with subtitles for videos and streams, a face-to-face mode and a meeting record viewer.
In your next meeting, Cicada listens, speaks and remembers for you.
They talk, you read subtitles in your language; you talk, they hear theirs; the meeting is turned into notes as it goes, and you keep a bilingual record. Audio is turned into text only on your Mac.