Live Captions in Slack and Teams: Huddles vs Meetings
Captions make calls easier to follow in noisy rooms, quiet offices and second languages. Both Slack and Teams can caption speech in real time, but the feature sets are far apart. Slack keeps one English-only toggle inside huddles. Teams builds a full caption system with styling, spoken-language detection, translated captions and human CART captioning. Here is what each help page documents.
Miles Crawford
The quick version
In a Slack huddle, click the three dots icon (or the gear icon in the expanded huddle window) and select Turn on live captions; captions are English only and disappear when the huddle ends. In a Teams meeting, select More actions, then Captions, then style them from Open caption settings; translated captions and CART captioning are available on top, with licensing rules for translation.
Slack: captions inside a huddle
Once you are in a huddle, click the three dots icon from the huddle window in your sidebar, or the gear icon from the expanded huddle window, and select Turn on live captions. On mobile, tap the three dots icon for the same option. If you want captions every time, there is a preference for it: profile picture, Preferences, Audio & video, then under When joining a huddle check Automatically turn on captions.
Slack: the documented limits
Slack's own notes on the feature are short and firm: captions are currently only available in English, and they will not be saved once the huddle ends. There is no documented styling, translation or downloadable transcript for huddle captions, so what you see in the moment is all you get.
Teams: turning captions on
On desktop, select More actions in the meeting controls, then Captions. On mobile, select More options, then Turn on live captions, and More options, then Turn off live captions to stop them. Teams detects what is said in the meeting and presents real-time captions, and Microsoft notes that people can choose not to be identified in captions and transcripts. Teams does not save captions; for a record you would turn on transcription instead and download the transcript after the meeting.
Teams: styling and spoken language
Hover over the captions pane and select Open caption settings to customize: Caption styles changes font style, size, color and more, and you can adjust the number of lines and the captions' position in the meeting window. On mobile, More options, then Caption style, offers font and background colors and caption height, and your changes persist across future meetings. For accuracy, set the meeting spoken language to what people are actually speaking; if Teams detects a mismatch, it prompts the organizer, co-organizer or transcript initiator to update it, and they can change it any time from the same settings pane.
Teams: translated captions and CART
Live translated captions let each viewer pick a Translate to language. The licensing rules matter: translation is part of Teams Premium and Microsoft Copilot, but if the meeting organizer holds either license, every participant can use translated captions and transcription without their own license, while individually licensed participants only unlock it for themselves. For town halls and live events, organizers preselect the languages attendees can choose from: six languages, or ten with Premium, from over fifty. Separately, Teams supports CART captions from a human captioner as an alternative to the built-in automatic captions.
Teams: privacy and data handling
Microsoft documents the data story in unusual detail. Captions are generated by its automatic speech recognition service, which may use the meeting subject, invitation, participant names, attachments and recent emails of participants to improve accuracy. Microsoft says no human can access the meeting audio, caption data is permanently deleted after the meeting, and processing happens in the geographical region where your organization is based. Obscenities are obscured by asterisks, captions are not yet available in government clouds on the Teams mobile app, and admins can disable the feature altogether.
Which one for what?
Our read: for a quick internal huddle in English, Slack's captions are fine and the automatic-captions preference makes them effortless. For anything more (a multilingual audience, accessibility requirements, a record of what was said, or caption styling for readability), Teams is the only one of the two that documents it. If captions need to survive the call, neither tool saves them: Slack drops them with the huddle, and Teams points you to transcription instead.
What to be careful about
- Slack captions are English only. No other languages are documented.
- Neither tool saves captions. Slack drops them when the huddle ends; Teams requires transcription for a downloadable record.
- Teams translation has licensing rules. Organizer licensing covers everyone; individual licenses cover only that participant.
- Spoken language affects accuracy. Set it to what people are actually speaking, and expect Teams to prompt when it detects a mismatch.
- Teams captions can draw on meeting context. Microsoft's ASR may use the subject, invitation, participant names, attachments and recent emails to improve accuracy; admins can disable the feature.
- Government clouds are an exception. Captions are not yet available in government clouds on the Teams mobile app.
- Accuracy is environmental. Microsoft recommends speaking clearly and directly into the mic, avoiding background noise, avoiding crosstalk and using Teams-certified equipment.
Sources
Checked October 25, 2026. Features, steps and limits follow each product's own help articles. The guidance on when each shines is ours.