How to Save Windows Live Captions to a Text File
Short answer
Not with Windows alone. Live Captions has no save button, export or history. A free tool such as LiveCaptionsTXTRecorder can save its text to a file as you go. For full transcripts you can search and replay, use a captioning app that keeps them, like Hearica.
Why there’s no save button
Live Captions is designed to be private: audio is processed on your PC and nothing is kept. Microsoft’s guide says: “Generated captions are not stored anywhere on the device or the cloud.” That’s reassuring for sensitive conversations, but once a line scrolls out of the caption window, it’s gone.
Save Live Captions to a text file with a free tool
LiveCaptionsTXTRecorder is a small, free, open-source app that writes whatever Live Captions shows into a TXT file. It needs Windows 11.
- Download the latest
.exefrom its Releases page. No installation or Python needed. - Turn on Live Captions with Windows + Ctrl + L.
- Open LiveCaptionsTXTRecorder and choose System Audio, or Microphone to caption your own voice.
- Choose where to save, tick timestamps if you want them, and click Start Recording.
- Click Stop & Save when you’re done. It also backs up every 60 seconds and saves automatically if Live Captions closes.
It’s an independent project, not ours and not from Microsoft, so we can’t vouch for it.
Other workarounds
| Workaround | The catch |
|---|---|
| Record your screen with the caption window visible (Snipping Tool or Xbox Game Bar) | A video, not text: you can’t search or copy it |
| Use your meeting app’s transcript (Teams, Zoom, Meet) | Only that app’s meetings, and often only if the organizer turns it on |
Get full transcripts automatically with Hearica
Hearica captions any sound on your PC, like Live Captions, but keeps what it hears:
- Saved by default. Every session is saved as a transcript with timestamps, along with the audio.
- Search everything. Find a word or name across all your saved sessions.
- Replay with captions. Play the recording back with the captions in sync, to check exactly what was said.
- Scroll back during the session. Missed something? Scroll up in the caption window, copy it, then press Sync to live.
- Export when you need to. TXT or Word on Premium; PDF or SRT subtitles on Pro.
It made 30% fewer errors than Live Captions on difficult meeting audio in our test, so there’s more worth keeping. Audio is transcribed in the cloud, in a region you can choose where offered, while saved transcripts and recordings are stored on your PC (see the privacy policy). The free plan includes 60 minutes a month.
