Earwig questions, answered

All of them. Earwig subtitles whatever your device is playing, whichever app is playing it, because it listens to the system audio rather than hooking into any particular app. It can listen to a microphone instead when the sound is in the room rather than on the device. Switch between the two with the audio-source icon at the bottom left of the subtitle window.

No, processing occurs on your device.

The way Earwig listens to audio from your device is to capture it from screen capture. Audio is the only thing processed by the capture, your screen data is not captured.

Use System Audio when the sound is coming from the device itself: a video, a conference call, a podcast, a lecture recording. Earwig captures what your device is playing and ignores its own output, so the subtitles never feed back on themselves. Use a microphone when the sound is in the room: a person in front of you, a meeting, a talk. The icon at the bottom left of the subtitle window switches between them.

The subtitle window will tell you what is missing and offer a settings button that takes you straight to the right panel in System Settings. System audio needs Screen Recording on a Mac; listening to the room needs Microphone access. Grant it there and come back.

Only the first time you use a language, to download its packs, which macOS handles. Once the speech pack for the language being spoken and the translation pack for the language you are reading are both installed, Earwig needs no network at all. That is what makes it usable on a plane or a bad hotel connection.

The languages come from Apple's on-device speech recognition and translation, so the exact list depends on your device and its installed language packs rather than on Earwig. In practice that covers Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Note that the From and To lists are not the same length: From can only offer a language your device can both recognise from speech and translate, while To can offer anything it can translate. Earwig's own menus are separately available in 24 languages, set with System Language in Settings.

Because the two lists need different things. From needs a language your device can both recognise from speech and translate, so it is the shorter list. To only needs a language it can translate. If a pair has no direct translation model, Earwig routes it by way of English rather than giving up, which needs no action from you.

Settings, then Translation Languages, shows every language with its status: Downloaded, Not downloaded, Downloading, Not supported or Failed. Use Download on the one you need. Small indicators beside the language pickers tell you the same thing at a glance: a spinner means a model is being checked or fetched, a red warning triangle means something went wrong and can be clicked to retry, and nothing at all means it is ready. macOS owns the packs, so Earwig cannot delete one for you. Use Open System Settings at the bottom of that window and remove it there.

Just select the language you want the subtitles, it doesn't need to be a translated language.

Yes. Open a second window from the New menu, then Subtitles Window, or with the plus button in the subtitle window's top bar. The keyboard shortcut is Command S. Set the To language of each window to the language you want it to show. Both windows subtitle the same audio at the same time, which is also the neatest way to use Earwig for language learning: put the language you are learning in one window and the one you already know in the other.

There is no fixed limit. Each extra window runs its own translation, though, so the more you have open the more work your device is doing. If the text starts lagging, close a window or switch Live Text to Committed Words. Several windows at once works on Mac and iPad; on iPhone there is a single full-screen subtitle view.

Font Size in Settings runs from 8 to 200; the default of 50 suits a window a few hundred pixels tall, and you will want far more for a window across the room. The sliders button in the subtitle window's top bar sets size and margins for that one window only. To sit the text across the bottom of a wide window, raise Margin Top rather than making the window shorter: the panel keeps its shape and the words land where you expect.

Turn on 'Subtitles window always on top' in Settings, which keeps the panel above other windows including a full-screen video. Changing it asks to restart the window. Transparency sets how see-through the panel becomes once the controls fade, from Full down to Off, and hovering over the window always makes it solid again so you can read it. Both are Mac-only, because on iPhone the subtitles fill the screen instead.

That is Auto hide controls, on by default: the top and bottom bars fade after a few seconds of no interaction and come back when you move the pointer over the window. Turn it off in Settings if you would rather they stayed. They will not hide while a menu is open or while a language is still loading.

Yes, with Live Text in Settings under Subtitles. It has five settings that trade immediacy against steadiness. Live shows every revision the moment it happens and is the default, the fastest and the twitchiest. Committed Words waits until the recogniser has stuck with a word three times and is the best middle ground. Finals Only shows nothing until a sentence is finished, completely steady but always a beat behind. Slower Updates redraws on a timer you set. Source Live, Translation Final dims the in-progress line in the original language and only translates finished sentences.

Click the ear to mute Earwig. Muting stops it listening and also makes the subtitle text selectable, which is how you pick out and copy a single line with the mouse. Click the ear again to carry on listening.

Every feature is unlocked in the trial: all languages, all the packs and settings, several windows at once, and both system audio and a microphone. The only limit is how long one stretch of translation can run, which is 60 seconds. The clock starts at the first translated line rather than when you open the app. When a session reaches the limit Earwig keeps listening but hides most of each word behind asterisks, and an EXPIRED badge appears beside the plan badge.

Click the Trial badge in the top bar of the subtitle window, then Upgrade to Pro. Pro is a one-time purchase, and one purchase covers Earwig on Mac and on iPhone or iPad as long as you use the same Apple Account. If you have bought it before and are setting up a new device, use Restore in the same store window.

iOS can take a while to register the broadcaster. Reboot your device and wait a few seconds for it to appear.

Audio from other apps may pause when Earwig microphone is on. In this case switch Earwig from using the microphone to using System Audio. Do this by pressing the microphone icon in the bottom left of the view and selecting System Audio.

Work through five things. Check the ear indicator, if it is struck through Earwig is muted, so click it. Check the audio-source icon at the bottom left, because listening to a microphone when the sound is coming from a video will get you nothing. If the window shows a permission message, follow its settings button. If it says No Sound then Earwig is listening and hearing silence, so turn the volume up or move closer to the microphone. Finally check the output volume itself, since Earwig hears what your device plays.

Nine times in ten the From language is set wrong: recognition will gamely produce English-shaped words from French audio. Set From to the language actually being spoken, as Earwig does not guess it for you. Beyond that, background music and several overlapping voices both hurt badly and have no fix other than a cleaner source, and a distant or built-in microphone in a large room will struggle, where moving closer is the single biggest improvement available.

The first use of a language pair needs a download that macOS handles, so leave it a minute on a slow connection. If it keeps failing, open Settings, then Translation Languages, and download the pack from there, where you can see exactly which of the two is missing. Downloading a pack needs a network connection; using one afterwards does not.

Settings, then Support, then Go to FAQ and Support has the full FAQ, and the version number just below it is worth including if you write in. You can also email [email protected].