How to use DubTab
Live captions and real-time AI dubbing — from installing it to hearing your first translated video.
Get running in 60 seconds
Everything below happens inside the browser. If the sound you want translated is playing in a tab, this is the shorter path.
- 1Install it, then pin it
Add DubTab from the Chrome Web Store and pin it to your toolbar. You will be opening it often enough to want it there.
- 2Sign in with Google
Open the popup and sign in. A free account gets 15 minutes to try live captions and dubbing.
- 3Open a tab that is already playing
YouTube, Netflix, Zoom, Google Meet, a course player — anything with sound. DubTab cannot start on a silent page, and Chrome blocks capture on chrome:// and Web Store pages entirely.
- 4Pick the two languages
Auto Detect handles mixed speakers well. If it is one person in one language the whole way through, naming that language yourself gets you better accuracy.
- 5Press Start
The dock appears at the edge of the page. Subtitles come up within a couple of seconds, and the translated voice starts speaking over the original.
Auto-save dubbed audio is read once, at the moment a session starts — turning it on halfway through does nothing for the session already running. It also needs the translated voice switched on: if there is no dubbing, there is nothing to save.
The controls
Once a session is live, everything you need sits in the dock at the edge of the page.
The dock always tells you which of the three it is in. If the connection drops it reconnects on its own and says so, counting the attempts.
Pause freezes captions and dubbing, and no audio is sent while it is paused. Stop is the one that ends the session and saves it to your history.
Three ways to show captions — docked beside the video, across the bottom of the screen, or not at all when you only want the voice.
The voice is chosen per target language, and you can preview it before committing. The mixer gives you two faders — original audio and translated voice — plus ducking, which dips the original whenever the voice speaks.
When the dubbing falls behind
A translated sentence is usually longer than the original, and speaking it takes time. Over a long stretch the voice drifts behind the picture. You decide what DubTab does about it.
Speeds the voice up slightly so it stays with the video. You still hear every line — just a little faster when it needs to catch up.
Never speeds up. The voice reads at its natural pace and drifts further behind the picture as the session goes on.
Where to find it: open the Audio Mixer in the dock and look for Auto catch-up. On is Keep in sync.
After the session
Every line, original and translation, with the timing kept. Search it, copy it, export it.
A structured recap of what was actually said, generated once and kept with the session.
The same session as a tree. Click any node and the original lines behind it come up.
Ask questions about the session and get answers that cite the lines they came from.
DubTab saves only the voice it generates itself. The sound from your tab, your meeting or your desktop is streamed for translation and never written to our servers. That is not a switch you have to remember — it is how the recording pipeline is built.
Keep your minutes
While paused, no audio is sent and no minutes are spent. Stop is the one that ends the session and saves it.
Auto stop when idle ends a session after 5, 10 or 20 minutes without speech, so a tab you forgot about does not drain your balance.
Your plan's monthly minutes are spent first. Extra lifetime minutes are only touched once those run out.
Extension or Windows app?
| Chrome Extension | Windows App | |
|---|---|---|
| What it hears | One browser tab | Any app, or the whole computer |
| Best for | YouTube, Udemy, Coursera, anything in a tab | Zoom, Teams, desktop players, local files |
| Where captions appear | Docked inside the page | Floating HUD over every window |
| Controls | The dock | HUD, tray menu, global hotkeys |
| Requires | Chrome or Edge | Windows 11 |
The short version: if the sound is inside a browser tab, use the extension. If it is not, use the Windows app. One subscription covers both.
We would rather say that than show you a tab that does nothing. Tell us which one you need and we will email you the day it ships — nothing else.