How to use Earwig

01Quick start: subtitles in under a minute

Earwig listens to sound, writes down what it hears and translates it, live. There is nothing to import and no file to prepare: you point it at a source of audio, tell it which two languages are involved, and read.

×

02The subtitle window, part by part

Earwig has no ordinary title bar and no main menu to speak of. The whole app is this one floating panel, and its controls fade away when you stop using them so that only the text remains.

×

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

Move the pointer away from the window and, after a moment, the two bars fade out and the panel returns to whatever Transparency you have set. Move back over it, or click it, and they come back. If you would rather they never hid themselves, turn Auto hide controls off in settings.

03Choosing what Earwig listens to

There are two kinds of source: the audio your Mac is playing, and a microphone. The icon in the bottom-left corner tells you which is in use, and clicking it lets you change.

×

System Audio

Choose System Audio when the sound is coming from your Mac: a video, a conference call, a podcast, a lecture recording. Earwig captures the audio your Mac is playing and ignores its own output, so the subtitles never feed back on themselves.

A microphone

Choose a microphone when the sound is in the room: a person in front of you, a meeting, a talk. Earwig asks for Microphone permission the first time. If you decline, the window tells you and offers the same shortcut into System Settings.

• Pick the microphone closest to whoever is speaking. Recognition quality follows microphone quality more than anything else.
• Background music and several people talking at once are the two things that hurt accuracy most.
• Switching source restarts listening immediately. Any text already on screen stays until new speech replaces it.

04Setting the From and To languages

From is the language being spoken. To is the language you want to read. Both are ordinary lists: click one, pick a language, and Earwig restarts with the new pair.

×

The two lists are not the same length. From can only offer languages your Mac can both recognise from speech and translate, while To can offer anything it can translate. That is why a language sometimes appears in one list and not the other.

Earwig does not guess the spoken language for you, so From does need to be right. If the subtitles come out as nonsense words that look vaguely like the right sounds, that is almost always a From set to the wrong language.

The small indicator beside each language

05Language packs

The models that do the recognising and the translating are supplied by macOS, not by Earwig, and they download on demand. Settings ▸ General ▸ Translation Languages shows you what is installed.

×

×

Downloads are handled by macOS, which is also why Earwig cannot delete a pack for you. To reclaim the space, use the Open System Settings button at the bottom of the window and remove the language there.

06Reading the subtitles

Speech recognition changes its mind as it goes: it commits to a word, then revises it when the next word makes the sentence clearer. How much of that churn you see on screen is up to you, and it is the single most useful thing to tune in Earwig.

Live Text: how much of the guesswork to show

Settings ▸ Subtitles ▸ Live Text has five settings. They trade immediacy against steadiness.

Update Interval only appears when Slower Updates is selected, and runs from half a second to three seconds.

One line, or a transcript

Out of the box Earwig shows only the current line, replacing it as each new sentence finishes. That keeps the window small and the eye in one place, which is what you want when the subtitles are sitting under a video.

×

Turn Rolling Text on and finished lines stay instead, building up a scrolling transcript you can read back through. That suits a talk or a meeting, where you want to catch up on a sentence you missed.

×

With a transcript on screen, scrolling up pauses the follow-along so the text stops moving under you. A Live button appears in the bottom-right; click it to jump back to the newest line and start following again. Scrolling back down to the bottom does the same thing on its own.

Stopping the text from jumping

As a live line grows it pushes everything above it, which is tiring to read. Pinned Live Text fixes that: it reserves a fixed block at the bottom of the panel for the line in progress, so finished text above it never moves. Pinned Lines sets how tall that block is, from one to four lines.

Showing the original alongside

Turn on Show Original Language and the panel splits in half: the translation on top, what was actually said underneath, with a hairline between them. It costs you half your reading area, so it suits a wide, short window.

×

Getting the text out

The small copy button in the top-right of each pane puts that pane's whole conversation on the clipboard, history and current line together. With Show Original Language on there are two of them, one per language.

To copy just part of it, click the ear to mute first. Muted text can be selected with the mouse and copied with Command C as normal.

When nothing is being said

After about ten seconds of silence, Earwig writes No Sound in the panel so you know it is still listening and simply has nothing to work with. If you find that distracting, turn off Show silence message; to stop it watching for silence at all, turn off Detect silence.

07Making the subtitles readable

Subtitles are only useful if they are comfortable to read from wherever you are sitting. Earwig gives you a font size, a colour and four margins, and lets you set them per window as well as globally.

×

08Transparency, corners and staying on top

Earwig is designed to sit over the thing you are watching rather than beside it, and these settings decide how politely it does that.

09Translating into more than one language at once

The plus button in the top bar opens another subtitle window. Each window has its own From and To, its own font size and its own margins, but they all listen to the same audio.

×

This is the quiet trick that makes Earwig good for language learning: put the language you are learning in one window and the one you already know in the other, and read across when you lose the thread.

10Every setting, in order

Open settings with the gear in the top bar or Command ,. The window has five sections, in this order.

×

11Trial and Pro

Earwig is free to try and a single purchase to keep. There is no subscription.

×

The trial is not a cut-down version: every feature is unlocked, and the only limit is how long a stretch of translation can run. The clock starts at the first translated line, not when you open the app.

Once a trial session reaches the limit, Earwig keeps listening but hides most of each word behind asterisks, and an EXPIRED badge appears next to the plan badge. To lift the limit, click the badge and then Upgrade to Pro.

12iPhone and iPad differences

Earwig is the same app on every device, but a phone is not a floating window, and iOS handles device audio differently. Here is everything that is not the same.

13When something is not working

Most problems come down to one of four things: the wrong source, the wrong From language, a missing model, or a permission that was declined.

No text appears at all

• Check the ear indicator. If it is struck through, Earwig is muted; click it.
• Check the source icon in the bottom-left. Listening to a microphone when the sound is coming from a video will get you nothing.
• If the window is showing a permission message, follow its settings button and grant what it asks for. On a Mac, system audio needs Screen Recording.
• If it says No Sound, Earwig is listening and hearing silence. Turn the volume up, or move closer to the microphone.
• Check the volume itself. Earwig hears what your Mac plays, so muted output means no subtitles.

The words are wrong, or look like nonsense

• Nine times in ten, From is set to the wrong language. Recognition will gamely produce English-shaped words from French audio.
• Background music and several overlapping voices both hurt badly. There is no fix beyond a cleaner source.
• A distant or built-in microphone in a large room will struggle. A closer microphone is the single biggest improvement available.

It sits there loading, or offers to try again

• First use of a language pair needs a download, which macOS handles. Leave it a minute on a slow connection.
• If it keeps failing, open Settings ▸ 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, once installed, does not.

The text is too jumpy to read

• Set Live Text to Committed Words, which is the best compromise for most people.
• Turn on Pinned Live Text so finished lines stop being pushed around by the line in progress.
• Finals Only removes the churn completely, at the cost of always being a sentence behind.

The window is in the way, or will not stay put

• Turn on Subtitles window always on top to keep it above a full-screen video.
• Raise Transparency so the panel fades back once you stop hovering over it.
• Drag the bottom-right corner to resize, and anywhere else on the panel to move. If dragging selects text instead, the app is muted; click the ear.

Still stuck? Settings ▸ Support ▸ Go to FAQ and Support has the full FAQ, and the version number just below it is worth including if you write in.