Present: live captions and translation
The sermon's words on the screens and phones as they're said, translated for people who read another language.
Live captions put the pastor's words on the screens and on people's phones as they're said, a few seconds behind, and translate them for people who read another language. The booth computer hears the pastor through the sound desk's input, chosen in Get ready's (the same one that records the sermon, if your church records). Captions cost 2¢ a minute, and 1¢ a minute more for each translation turned on. The first 90 minutes your church uses are free.
Turn them on
Get the booth ready
On the booth computer, open . Its step 4, , picks the sound desk's and has , the same as for recording (record the sermon). When the browser asks for the microphone, choose Allow on every visit. Captions never record: PraisePad keeps no copy of the sound.
Start them
- While you run the slides, open , then .
- The sheet shows the price, the free minutes left and about how long your AI credit lasts. For a guest preacher, change .
- Press . Before the first spoken slide, they wait for it.
A sermon that moves between English and Spanish: choose . For another pair, choose the language the sermon is mostly in. A translation into the sermon's own language is left out for the day, and isn't paid for. Captions don't run in Practice, and only one computer runs them for a service.
Start them on the computer that hears the pastor. It doesn't have to be the one running the slides: a computer at the sound desk that follows the slides can run captions, and they stop by themselves when the service ends. starts them only on a computer that records the sermon or has its input chosen in Get ready's .
The CC chip
Once captions start, or are set to start, a CC chip sits beside REC at the top: "CC · EN ES" with the languages, "CC armed" while they wait for the first spoken slide, "CC paused · song" and "CC reconnecting…", which comes back by itself. Press it for , and , or while it's armed.
"CC stopped" says why when you press it, with what to do: the AI credit is used (ask an owner or admin to add some), the service's limit was reached (a leader raises it in ), no microphone (pick the input in Get ready's ), or captions are on at another computer (stop them there; this computer can start them within ten minutes after). opens the sheet. In the last minute and a half before the credit or the limit runs out, the chip gets an amber ring and says so. The Ready strip says "Captions: not started" until they are.
When they pause
Captions pause by themselves for songs, the loop before the service, announcements and countdown parts, and slides marked , and carry on at the next spoken slide. A chorus sung inside the sermon part isn't a song: press the chip, then , and when the pastor speaks again.
Where they show
- The main projector and the pastor's screen, as Settings says. During a song, the song's words are there instead. Room screens show each sentence once it's finished, rolling up a line at a time so a long one is read from its start; a pastor's screen opened on the computer that runs captions, or paired, also shows the words still being heard, dimmer.
- Screen links, other windows and paired lobby screens, by their look: is , ( on a stream look) or , in a with 1 to 3 (looks). The singers' monitor never shows them.
- The livestream: under , , press , and copy the link into OBS as a browser source. It shows the captions alone (words for your livestream).
On phones
People following along (Follow along on phones) see the last two lines at the bottom of the page; a tap opens everything said so far. The language choice at the top lists the sermon's language first, then each translation: Spanish turns the page, the captions and the Bible to Spanish, and Korean or another turns the captions only, with the page in English. During a song, phones say "Paused for the song · the words are on the screen".
Verses as the pastor speaks
When the pastor names a passage in an English or Spanish sermon, a strip under the top bar says "Heard Romans 8:28". shows it on the screen in your church's usual Bible (set in , , under ), or the Reina-Valera 1909 for a sermon in Spanish. Nothing goes up by itself, and the two before it stay beside it under Earlier.
What's kept
The sound goes from the booth to AssemblyAI, which writes the captions, and each finished sentence goes to Anthropic to be translated, as the Privacy Policy says. PraisePad keeps a service's captions and their translations until the service ends, then deletes them. A Stream Deck can pause and resume them with captions_toggle (the control API), but never starts them. Its press goes to the computer running the slides, so it pauses captions only when that computer runs them too.
Open in PraisePad to try it