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Live Captions in OpenVidu Meet#

OpenVidu Meet includes a built-in Live Captions feature that turns speech into text in real-time. This is a powerful tool for making your meetings more accessible to hearing-impaired users, helping participants in noisy environments, and assisting non-native speakers.

How to Enable Live Captions in OpenVidu Meet#

Local Meet Deployment Limitation

Live Captions are not available in local Meet deployments. You must use either the OpenVidu Local deployment or a OpenVidu production deployment to enable this feature.

1. Connect to your OpenVidu deployment#

SSH into an OpenVidu Node and navigate to your OpenVidu deployment directory.

Depending on your OpenVidu deployment type:

If you are using OpenVidu Local (Development), simply navigate to the configuration folder of the project:

# For OpenVidu Local COMMUNITY
cd openvidu-local-deployment/community

# For OpenVidu Local PRO
cd openvidu-local-deployment/pro

If you are using OpenVidu Single Node, SSH into the only OpenVidu node and navigate to:

cd /opt/openvidu/config

If you are using OpenVidu Elastic, SSH into the only Master Node and navigate to:

cd /opt/openvidu/config/cluster/media_node

If you are using OpenVidu High Availability, SSH into any of your Master Nodes (doesn't matter which one) and navigate to:

cd /opt/openvidu/config/cluster/media_node

2. Enable the Speech Processing Agent#

Modify file agent-speech-processing.yaml to enable the Live Captions Service with processing: manual:

docker_image: docker.io/openvidu/agent-speech-processing-vosk:3.6.0

enabled: true # (1)!

live_captions:
  processing: manual # (2)!
  1. Set enabled to true to activate the Speech Processing Agent.
  2. Set processing to manual; participants will activate captions on demand via a toolbar button.

Info

By default, the Speech Processing Agent uses a local Vosk model for speech-to-text transcription.

For a more advanced setup, consider using a cloud-based provider. See Cloud providers for more information.

Default language is English

The Speech Processing Agent uses English for speech-to-text transcription by default. To use a different language, you must configure a different Vosk model. See Vosk models configuration for details on changing the language model.

3. Enable Captions in OpenVidu Meet configuration#

Edit the meet.env file and ensure the following configuration variable is set:

MEET_CAPTIONS_ENABLED=true

4. Restart OpenVidu#

Apply your changes by restarting OpenVidu. This ensures the system recognizes the new live captioning capabilities.

Depending on your OpenVidu deployment type:

Run where docker-compose.yaml is located:

docker compose restart

Run this command in your node:

sudo systemctl restart openvidu

Run this command in your Master Node:

sudo systemctl restart openvidu

Run this command in one of your Master Nodes:

sudo systemctl restart openvidu

5. Enable/Disable Captions for specific Rooms#

Captions are enabled by default when a room is created, whether through the UI or the REST API. This behavior can be overridden to enable or disable captions on a per-room basis.

🎙️ Using Live Captions in a Meeting#

Once live captions are enabled for a room, participants can activate them during the meeting:

  1. Activate Captions: Click the captions button in the toolbar to enable live captions.
  2. Real-time Transcription: Once activated, captions appear instantly at the bottom of the screen as participants speak—no additional configuration is required.
  3. Clear Visibility: The interface is designed to be easy to read without blocking the video feed.

[Screenshot of Live Captions in Action]