Quick start and troubleshooting

How to use Teams Caption Recorder

A concise guide to automatically saving Microsoft Teams live captions as private browser transcripts. This extension works with the web version of Teams and never outputs audio.

Before you start: Confirm you have permission to retain meeting captions. The extension reads real participants' words; use it in accordance with meeting rules, your workplace policies, and applicable law.

First-time installation

  1. Install Teams Caption Recorder – Local Notes from the Chrome Web Store in Google Chrome (or a compatible Chromium browser, such as Edge).
  2. Read the automatically opened setup page. Choose Enable automatic captions and saving to opt in. If you choose Not now, automatic recording remains disabled.
  3. Optional: pin the extension from Chrome’s Extensions puzzle-piece menu. The pinned toolbar icon opens the private status and transcript controls.
  4. Navigate to teams.microsoft.com or teams.cloud.microsoft and sign in to your usual account. Join a meeting through the browser, not the Teams desktop application.
  5. After you enter the live call, the extension silently tries to turn on Teams’ Live Captions. It captures only captions that Teams displays while the session is active.
  6. At the end, click Teams’ normal Leave button. The extension finishes saving automatically. Open its toolbar popup → Open saved transcripts to find the saved meeting and export it.

When you want to record only some meetings

Click the extension icon and turn off Start when a meeting is detected. You can then manually use Start capture after joining a meeting. Use Pause during a call if you want to exclude later caption updates, and Resume to continue. Finish permanently closes that session.

What gets saved

Each record contains a meeting title, approximate caption-observation timestamps, the speaker label Teams displays (when available), and text revisions from the native caption pane. These timestamps are not sample-accurate audio timecodes. Previously unheard or unrendered speech cannot be reconstructed. The extension never reads meeting chat messages for its transcript.

How to export and delete transcripts

  1. Click the extension toolbar icon and choose Open saved transcripts.
  2. Select the meeting in the left-hand list. Rename it using the title control if desired.
  3. Use Export to choose TXT for plain text, Markdown for notes, JSON for structured data, or WebVTT for captions/subtitles.
  4. Delete a completed transcript from the library if you no longer need it. For wholesale removal, clear the extension’s data or uninstall it; this cannot be undone without a separate export.

Troubleshooting

Captions didn't turn on automatically

Make sure you have joined the call and Automatically turn on captions is enabled in the toolbar popup. Use Retry live captions if necessary. In Teams, the usual manual path is More → Language and speech → Show live captions. Some releases show a direct Captions item instead. English-language Teams menus are best supported.

The transcript still shows zero entries

Check that Teams is showing actual live speech text. Opening the caption pane while nobody talks may legitimately yield zero entries. Speak an ordinary test sentence in a meeting you control and verify it appears in Teams’ native caption area. The extension cannot create captions itself.

The extension doesn't detect the meeting

Use the Teams browser experience rather than the native desktop application. Verify the extension has site access for the Teams domain and reload an already-open Teams tab after installing or updating. Government or specialized sovereign-cloud URLs may not be supported.

Will it announce recording, play audio, or show an overlay?

No. There are no audio-output APIs, announcements, or banners created by the extension. Teams may still display its own built-in status messages or caption panel.

My meeting ended, but I don't see it

Allow several seconds after Leave for pending local writes to finish, then reopen the local library. If Teams or the browser crashed, the session may be marked Interrupted. Any captions already written to local storage should remain available, but the unacknowledged final update can be lost.

I removed the extension. Where did my records go?

Transcripts live in the browser’s extension-specific local IndexedDB. Uninstalling, resetting the browser profile, or clearing extension storage may permanently delete them. Use export before removal or reinstalling.

Is this an official Microsoft product?

No. This extension is independently developed and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft. It interacts with the Teams web interface, which may change over time.

Privacy, permissions, and support

We request extension storage and restricted access to supported Microsoft Teams domains. This lets the extension read live captions and save them locally without a developer-hosted server. Read the full privacy policy to learn how records are used and deleted.

Bug reports and feature requests: GitHub Issues. Please do not post real meeting transcripts, access tokens, or private organization URLs in public reports.