Guide
How to translate any livestream you watch on iPhone
A recording can be subtitled later. A livestream cannot — the words do not exist until they are spoken, so there is no subtitle track to find and no version with one coming tomorrow. What works is an app that listens to the audio your iPhone is playing and floats the translation over it. Hono Subtitles does that in four taps, and because it reads the audio rather than the platform, the same setup covers Twitch, a YouTube live, a shopping stream or a national broadcaster's own app.
What to do
- Start the stream and leave it playing. It does not need to be in the foreground once you are set up, and you do not need to turn the volume up or put it on speaker — the app is given the audio directly, not through the room.
- Open Hono Subtitles and set the two languages. One is the language being spoken, the other the one you read. The first time you pick a pair the models download; after that it is offline.
- Tap Start Sharing Audio, then confirm on the iOS sheet. The system asks every time — it is the standard broadcast permission, and it is what gives the app the sound another app is playing.
- Tap Open Subtitle Window and swipe back to the stream. The subtitle window stays on top of whatever you switch to. Drag it anywhere that is not covering the thing you are watching.
There is nothing live-specific to configure. The app is reading a stream of audio either way; whether it is being produced now or was recorded last year makes no difference to it.
Does iPhone translate a livestream on its own?
No — and it is worth being precise about why, because iOS has two features whose names suggest it should. Each does half of the job, and they are different halves.
| Feature | What it does to a livestream |
|---|---|
| Live Captions | Transcribes without translating — Korean audio becomes Korean text |
| Live Translation | Does not reach it: translation is limited to Messages, Phone, FaceTime and AirPods conversations |
| Hono Subtitles | Transcribes and translates it, over the app that is playing |
Live Translation also depends on your region and which iPhone you have. So the gap is real rather than invented: iOS will happily write down what is being said on a stream, and it will happily translate a phone call, but nothing built in will do both things at once on a video you are watching. Why it has to share your screen covers the mechanism in more detail.
Why live is a harder problem than a recording
With a recording you have options, even bad ones. Someone may have subtitled it. An official version may appear with subtitles later. You can pause on a line you did not catch and look it up. None of that survives contact with a live broadcast:
- There is nothing to find. A subtitle file is made from content that already exists. During a live broadcast the content is being created as you watch.
- There is no pausing. Looking a phrase up costs you whatever is said while you look. On a recording that is an annoyance; live, the thing you were trying to follow has moved on.
- Coverage depends on the platform, and on the streamer. Whatever captioning a given service offers, it varies by platform, by language and often by individual channel — so "does this stream have captions" is a question you have to ask again every time.
Reading the audio sidesteps all three. The app does not ask the platform for a caption track, because it is not talking to the platform at all.
It works the same everywhere, for the same reason
Hono Subtitles takes the audio your iPhone is playing, recognises the speech and translates it, entirely on the device. It never learns which app produced the sound. That is why the same setup covers a Twitch stream, a YouTube live, an Instagram or TikTok live, a Japanese or Korean broadcaster's own app, and a live shopping channel — and why a platform you have never heard of works too.
Why this app rather than the usual workarounds
Most ways of getting a foreign livestream translated on a phone involve a compromise somewhere. These are the ones this avoids.
It is given the audio, not left to overhear it
The common fallback is to point a second device, or a translation app's microphone, at your speaker. That means playing the stream out loud, in a quiet room, and accepting whatever the microphone makes of it. Here the sound arrives as the app is playing it, so headphones are fine and the room does not matter.
It runs on the device
Recognition and translation both happen on your iPhone, using the models iOS already ships. There is no account to create, nothing is uploaded to a server, and after the first download for a language pair there is no network involved on the subtitle side at all — the only thing using your connection is the stream.
It does not care which app is playing
Nothing is integrated with YouTube, Twitch or anyone else, so nothing breaks when a platform changes and there is no list of supported services to check. If your iPhone can play it, it can be subtitled.
Nothing is metered
There is no per-minute or per-stream charge, because there is no server doing the work to pay for. A four-hour broadcast costs the same as a four-minute one.
What live makes harder
Being honest about this is more useful than not, because these are the things that will actually shape whether it works for the stream you watch:
- Background music and crowd noise cost accuracy. Speech recognition works on what it can hear. A talk stream transcribes better than a music set or a stadium.
- Several people talking at once is hard. Recognition follows speech, not speakers, so a lively group call or a raid is messier than one person at a microphone.
- There is no second pass. On a recording you could rewind and let it try again. Live, a line that was missed is missed.
- It trails the speaker slightly. A phrase has to be heard before it can be recognised and translated. Expect to be reading a moment behind, which is fine for following a stream and wrong for anything you have to react to instantly.
- You cannot record your screen at the same time. iOS allows a single broadcast session and this is using it — so clipping a moment while subtitles are running is not possible.
Questions
Does it work on Twitch?
Yes, and on any other streaming app, because it reads the audio your iPhone is playing rather than asking the platform for captions. Nothing about the setup changes from one app to the next.
Can't I just use Live Captions for this?
Only if you already understand the language. Live Captions transcribes — it writes down what was said, in the language it was said in. Translating between languages is the part it does not do, and Live Translation, which does translate, only works inside Messages, Phone, FaceTime and AirPods conversations.
Do I have to play the stream out loud?
No. The audio is handed to the app by iOS rather than picked up by the microphone, so you can watch on headphones, with the volume where you like, in a noisy room.
How far behind the speaker is it?
A short delay, because a phrase has to be spoken before it can be recognised and translated. Comfortable for following along; not suitable for anything where you need to react in the same second.
Can I clip or record the stream with the subtitles showing?
No. iOS gives the system one broadcast session and the subtitle app is holding it, so screen recording cannot run at the same time.
Does it need a network connection of its own?
Only the first time you use a language pair, to download the models. After that recognition and translation both run on the device — the only thing using your connection is the stream itself.
Which languages can it listen to?
The list comes from iOS at runtime rather than being hardcoded, and the listening side and the reading side 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.
Hono Subtitles is on the App Store. Three subtitle window styles, and the languages come from whatever your iPhone already supports.
Get it on the App Store