No captions or translated audio
These are two different failures with two different causes. Start from the one you are actually seeing.
Nothing appears at all
No captions, no voice, and the session never reaches Translating. Work down this list — it is ordered by how often each one is the answer.
- 1Check the tab is actually making sound
DubTab captures the audio of the tab, so a paused video or a page that has not started playing gives it nothing. Start playback first, then press Start.
- 2Check what kind of page it is
The browser blocks audio capture on its own pages.
chrome://URLs and the Chrome Web Store cannot be translated at all, and no setting changes that. - 3Read the dock state
Connecting that never becomes Translating is a network problem, not a settings problem. DubTab retries on its own and counts the attempts. If the count keeps climbing, stop the session and start it again — that clears a one-off stuck connection more reliably than waiting. If DubTab stops by itself with Connection keeps stalling, starting again on the same network will not help: see the next section.
- 1Check the audio source
If it is set to One specific app and that app is not the one making the sound, DubTab is listening to silence. Switch to Computer audio to confirm, then narrow it down again.
- 2Check the sound is playing on this computer
DubTab listens to what your machine plays. Audio going out to a headset over Bluetooth still counts; audio on a phone or a second machine does not.
- 3On a Mac, allow system audio recording
macOS asks the first time you start a session. If that was turned down, DubTab hears nothing and tells you: “Allow DubTab to record system audio in System Settings > Privacy & Security, then start again.”
- 4Read the session state
The HUD and the tray both show whether a session is live. A session stuck connecting is a network problem — stop and start it again to clear it.
DubTab stopped: “Connection keeps stalling”
The connection to our server opened, but the sound from your tab could not get through it — three times in a row. Rather than keep reconnecting while no captions arrive, the extension stops and says so. Something on the network between you and our server, such as a VPN, a firewall or a network filter, is blocking or slowing that connection.
- 1Try a different network
A phone hotspot is the quickest test. If DubTab works there, the problem is your usual connection.
- 2Turn your VPN on, or off
Either direction can help: a VPN can be what is blocking the connection, or what gets it past a block.
- 3Then press Start again
Starting again on the same network usually stalls again in the same way.
Captions appear, but there is no voice
Captions and dubbing are separate. If the text is scrolling, transcription and translation are both working and the problem is downstream of them.
- 1Check the dubbing voice is switched on
This is the answer most of the time. With the translated voice off, a session produces captions and a transcript and no audio at all. See Choose a voice and adjust audio.
- 2Check the mixer faders
The translated voice has its own fader, separate from the original audio. A fader pulled to the bottom is silence, not a bug.
- 3In the desktop app, check the tray menu
On Windows it is the tray icon, on a Mac the menu bar icon. Its Mute dubbing silences the dubbing on its own, and it survives stopping and starting a session.
- 4Give it a few seconds on the first line
The voice starts after the first sentence has been heard, translated and spoken. On a slow first sentence that is a few seconds of silence, not a failure.
The voice works, but there are no captions
Check whether the captions are tucked away. In the extension, Audio Only folds DubTab into a small bar on the page and leaves you with just the voice — click that bar, or its Expand button, and the captions come back in the mode you had. Collapse folds it the same way. In the desktop app, choose Show captions in the tray menu.
Common questions
Why can DubTab not translate a Chrome Web Store page?
The browser does not allow extensions to capture audio on its own internal pages, which includes chrome:// URLs and the Chrome Web Store. This is a browser restriction, not a DubTab setting, and there is no way around it. Play the audio on a normal web page, or use the desktop app.
I get captions but no dubbed voice. What is different about those two?
Captions come from transcription and translation; the dubbed voice is generated after that and can be switched off on its own. If text is scrolling, the first two steps are working — check that the translated voice is enabled, that its fader is up, and in the desktop app that the tray menu has not muted it.
The session keeps reconnecting.
DubTab holds a live connection while translating. Some VPNs, firewalls and corporate networks cut long-lived connections, or let one open but keep the sound from getting through. Stopping and starting again helps after a one-off drop; when it keeps happening, the network is the cause, so switch networks or turn your VPN on or off. The extension stops by itself after three stalled connections in a row and says Connection keeps stalling. Time when DubTab is not connected is not translated, so it is not charged.