For Mac · macOS 14+

Word-level captions, the way an editor would build them.

Komodo Captions is a calm Mac tool for word-level video captions. It runs entirely on your Mac's Neural Engine. Same Whisper model the cloud apps use — without the round trip.

Pay $39 once. Use it forever.

Get it on the Mac App Store →Watch the 30-second demo

14-day free trial. No credit card. No account.

[Demo video — drop in once recorded]
Why it's different

Three things every other caption tool gets wrong.

Runs on your Mac, not in someone's cloud.

Your video never leaves your machine. No upload wait, no queue, no privacy concerns. Same Whisper model OpenAI ships, running locally on Apple's Neural Engine. A 2-minute clip transcribes in seconds.

Eight curated styles, not eight hundred templates.

Anchor, Studio, Statement, Quiet, Subtitle, Pulse, Cinema, Headline — each designed for a specific shot. Pick the one for your video and move on. Fewer, better choices.

One purchase. No subscription. Ever.

$39 once. You own it. No monthly fee, no renewal, no upsell tiers. The opposite of the SaaS treadmill that's drained every other caption tool you've tried.

Built by a creator

I built this because I was tired of paying for it monthly.

I was paying Adobe $60 a month and watching it get worse — slower, busier, increasingly cluttered with AI features I didn't want. So I switched to DaVinci Resolve. One purchase. Owned my editor. Calm software.

Then I looked at the caption tools I was still paying monthly for. Submagic was the best of them but expensive. CapCut had 900 styles and I could never find the one I wanted. Captions.ai pivoted to AI influencer models and the captions tool got worse. Kapwing was glitchy — typing a period in their find-replace would refresh the page.

Nobody had built the DaVinci of captions. So I built it.

— Jacob, Komodo

One price
$39
one-time purchase. yours forever.
  • ✓ Unlimited renders, forever
  • ✓ No watermark
  • ✓ All caption styles + animations
  • ✓ Custom font upload
  • ✓ Up to 4K export
  • ✓ Free updates within v1
Get on the Mac App Store →

14-day free trial included. No subscription. No account.

Common questions

FAQ

Is Komodo Captions a one-time purchase or a subscription?+
One-time. $39, you own it forever within the v1 series. There is no monthly fee, no renewal, no usage cap. The opposite of Submagic, Captions.app, Veed, and Opus — which all charge $10–30+ per month, forever.
Does it really run entirely on my Mac?+
Yes. Transcription runs locally via WhisperKit on your Mac's Neural Engine (the same Whisper model OpenAI uses, ported to Apple Silicon by Argmax). Rendering uses AVFoundation. No audio or video data is uploaded anywhere. Your videos never leave your Mac.
How fast is it compared to the cloud caption tools?+
On an M-series Mac, a 2-minute video transcribes in 5–10 seconds. Cloud tools like Submagic or Captions.app take 60–180+ seconds for the same clip — upload time + queue time + render time + download time. No queue can match a Neural Engine that's already on your desk.
What caption styles are included?+
Eight curated styles, each designed for a specific shot: Anchor (interviews/news), Studio (podcasts), Statement (video essays), Quiet (documentary narration), Subtitle (accessibility), Pulse (energetic short-form), Cinema (narrative film), Headline (title cards). Fewer styles, better choices. Not 800 generic templates.
Can I use my own custom fonts?+
Yes — upload any TrueType (.ttf), OpenType (.otf), or TrueType Collection (.ttc) font and Komodo Captions registers it system-wide for the duration of the session. Weight is detected automatically, multiple weights of the same family appear as distinct entries, custom fonts are clearly badged, and you can remove them via right-click.
What about word-level accuracy?+
Komodo Captions uses WhisperKit's DTW-aligned word timestamps, which give sub-100ms precision on word starts and ends — sharper than what most cloud APIs return. This is the same alignment technique cited in Apple's accessibility research.
What can I export?+
MP4 with captions burned in (up to 4K), or an SRT sidecar file for use elsewhere. No watermark. No tax on output. The exported video is yours.
Do I need internet to use it?+
No — once installed, Komodo Captions works fully offline. The Whisper model is bundled in the app, so even the first launch transcribes without a download. The only time the app touches the internet is when verifying the Pro purchase with Apple's StoreKit servers.
Is there a free trial?+
Yes — 14 days of full Pro features, no credit card. After the trial, the one-time $39 unlock keeps you exporting forever.
What Mac do I need?+
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Apple Silicon (M1+) strongly recommended — transcription runs on the Neural Engine and is dramatically faster than on Intel Macs.

Word-level captions, on your Mac.

Launching on the Mac App Store soon. $39 one-time, 14-day trial.

Notify me when it's live →