Guide

How to translate any video you watch on iPhone

Updated 2026-10-22

There is no iOS setting for this. What you need is an app that listens to the audio your iPhone is already playing and floats the translation on top of whatever you are watching — so the subtitle appears over the video, in the app you were in. Hono Translate does that. Setting it up takes four taps, it needs iOS 26 or later, and the recognition and translation both run on the device.

What to do

Start whatever you want to watch and leave it playing.
Open Hono Translate. Choose the language being spoken and the language you read.
Tap Start translating sound. An iOS sheet appears — confirm with Start Sharing, then tap the empty space below the sheet.
The subtitle window floats up on its own and the iPhone returns to the Home Screen. Swipe back to what you were watching: the window stays on top, and translated lines appear as people speak.

That is the whole procedure. The window waits for the audio: until the share is running and the sheet is closed there is nothing to translate, so it only floats up after that last tap. Everything below is why it works this way, and where it stops.

Isn't this already built into iOS?

Three built-in features get close, and if one of them covers your case you do not need anything else.

Live Captions, under Settings → Accessibility, is described by Apple as a real-time transcription of spoken audio in any app, plus conversations around you. The word that matters is transcription: it writes down what was said, in the language it was said in. If the dialogue is Korean and you do not read Korean, a Korean transcript leaves you where you started. Apple also notes it is not available in every language, country or region.

Live Translation, part of Apple Intelligence, does translate — but it lives in Phone, FaceTime and Messages, on one-to-one calls. A drama playing in a streaming app is not a phone call.

Generated subtitles, new in iOS 27, come closest: when a video in a supported app has no subtitle track, iPhone can write one. Apple's own limits are narrow, though. The subtitles are generated in English only (U.S. and Canada), on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 and later, and the translated version needs a video that already has English subtitles to start from. Speech in Japanese or Korean with no subtitles still cannot become English, or anything else.

	Works over	Translates
Live Captions	any app, and the room	no — same language
Live Translation	Phone, FaceTime, Messages	yes
Generated subtitles (iOS 27)	supported apps	only a video that already has English subtitles
Hono Translate	any app	yes

The gap is the combination — a translated caption over an arbitrary app.

Why it has to share your screen

Step 3 asks for screen sharing, which sounds like more than it is. The sheet says that because screen sharing is the mechanism's name, not because the app wants your screen.

On a Mac you would route audio through a virtual device. Nothing like that exists on iOS, and that is deliberate: an app cannot see or hear what another app is doing. There is no "give me the audio of whatever is playing" API — not deprecated, not private, never there. The only sanctioned route is the broadcast mechanism, the one built so you can stream your screen to Twitch. That is why a system sheet appears, and why its button says Start Sharing rather than anything about subtitles.

What actually gets used is the audio. The broadcast hands over video frames as well, and the code that receives them does nothing — the branch is empty. The same is true of the microphone branch: the app never asks for microphone permission at all, so conversation in the room is neither captioned nor captured. The only permission the subtitles need is speech recognition. Nothing is stored or uploaded; the only thing ever saved is a clip you record yourself, and it goes straight to your Photos. After a language pair's models download once it works with no network connection at all. More on the privacy section of the main page.

The second half of the problem is showing the text. Putting anything on top of another app means using the one primitive iOS has for it: Picture-in-Picture, designed for video playback. There is no overlay window on iOS, no floating bubble, no always-on-top layer. Three things follow, and they are worth knowing before you install anything:

No iOS screen recording at the same time. iOS allows one broadcast session, and the app is using it. To keep a clip with the subtitles in it, use the app's own recording.
The floating window cannot be tapped. Picture-in-Picture is an output surface — it displays, it does not take input. Every control lives back in the app.
Opening the camera closes it. The camera takes over the same surface, so the window is torn down.

One more constraint never shows up in the interface but shapes everything behind it: the process that receives the broadcast has a 50 MB memory ceiling. Speech recognition and translation both have to fit inside that, on a live stream, without falling behind.

What it works over, and what it does not

It works over anything on the device that plays sound: streaming apps, live streams, podcasts, video in a browser, recorded lectures, a meeting you are listening to. The app never learns what produced the sound — it is reading the audio the system is playing.

What it will not do:

Video calls where your camera is on. The camera closes the floating window.
Sound coming from somewhere else. A laptop, a TV, a person in the room. It translates what this iPhone is playing, not what it can hear — there is no microphone involved.
iOS screen recording in parallel. One broadcast session, already in use — record a clip from inside the app instead.
Every language in both directions. The list is read from iOS at runtime rather than hardcoded, and the two sides are not the same list. Listening is limited to the overlap between Apple's on-device speech models and its translation models; reading is anything Apple's translator handles. A language can be available to read but not to listen to — Dutch, for instance.
Anything before iOS 26. The on-device recognition and translation models this depends on arrived in that release.

Questions

Isn't this what Live Captions already does?

Live Captions transcribes — it writes the audio down in the language it was spoken in. That solves hearing the dialogue, not understanding it. If you are watching something in a language you do not read, a transcript in that language leaves you exactly where you started.

Doesn't iOS 27 add subtitles to any video now?

Only English ones. Apple generates subtitles from English speech (U.S. and Canada), on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 and later, in apps that support it — and its translated subtitles start from an English track that already exists. A video spoken in Japanese, Korean or any other language, with no subtitles, is exactly the case it leaves out.

Can it translate a live stream, not just a recording?

Yes, and that is where it is most useful — a live stream has no subtitle track to fall back on and nothing to pause and look up. There is a separate guide on translating livestreams, including what live makes harder.

Can I record my screen while subtitles are running?

Yes, with the app's own recording. iOS gives the system one broadcast session and the subtitle app is holding it, so iOS screen recording cannot run at the same time — but Hono Translate can record the picture, the sound and the subtitles together and save the clip to Photos.

Why does the subtitle window disappear when I open the camera?

Picture-in-Picture and the camera compete for the same surface, and the camera wins. The session is still running — reopen the window from the app when you are done.

Does it need a network connection?

Only the first time you use a particular language pair, to download the models. After that recognition and translation both run locally and it works with no connection.

Can an iPhone app hear the sound another app is playing? Do I need a second phone?

Yes, and one iPhone is enough. Through screen sharing — the iOS sheet you confirm when you start — iOS hands the sound that is playing to the app you pick. Hono Translate takes that audio from iOS, not from the microphone, so headphones are fine, and its subtitles float in a Picture-in-Picture window over TikTok, YouTube or any other app.

Hono Translate is on the App Store. A subtitle card you can size to fit, and the languages come from whatever your iPhone already supports.

Get it on the App Store

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