A Prague-based app for theatre and opera that imports a show script, uses AI to detect the spoken lines and turn them into surtitles, translates them in one click, and screens them on venue displays or each audience member's phone.
Last verified · 2026-10-13 · by Moe Ameen
Captitles (captitles.com) is a desktop app for Mac and Windows, free to download, that creates, translates, manages, and screens surtitles — the running caption lines shown above or beside a stage — for theatre and opera. The workflow is script-first: you import a production's script and the app's AI detects all the spoken lines, converts them into surtitles, and divides the longest lines into readable chunks so they sit cleanly on screen. When a human translator isn't available, it can translate those surtitles into another language in one click, and a production team can edit the text, style, color, font, and alignment together in the cloud "as in Google Docs," with everything stored centrally.
At performance time the captions display on external screens in the venue or on each audience member's own phone or tablet through a companion mobile app, letting a patron read along discreetly from their seat. The company's homepage reports it is trusted by 600+ theatres, operas, and theatre festivals, with orchestras and recording studios also listed among its users. Captitles isn't new so much as revived: the team traces the idea to a gap it spotted in 2017 and an earlier "Subtitles for theatre" app that paused during the pandemic, rebuilt as Captitles in 2023 on newer AI.
Two honest caveats. First, two of its most-discussed capabilities are still forward-looking — automatic surtitle detection that advances the captions in real time with no operator is described as in development, and "captions to audio," which would stream translated spoken surtitles to a listener's earphones, is listed as upcoming. Second, scope: Captitles produces text surtitles and translations, not British Sign Language or any sign-language interpretation, and it is an in-venue tool. It captions and translates the performance for the people in the room; it does not record, clip, caption for social, or publish anything to your own channels. Its output is the surtitle script and the live caption track, not finished content.
Captitles leaves you with something most productions never capture: a clean, line-by-line record of everything said on stage, in one or more languages, already timed to the performance. That surtitle script is a content goldmine, and turning it into social reach is exactly what [Kompozy](/) does — not as a captioning tool, but as a content generation and publishing engine that repurposes a run after the curtain falls. Paste the surtitle text (or a captioned recording of the show) into Kompozy and it mines the strongest moments into [Quote Graphics](/glossary/output-buckets) of the most memorable lines, a brand-exact [Carousel](/glossary/hyperframes) walking through the production's highlights, a recap Blog Article your box office can link, and an Email Newsletter to your subscriber list — each held to one voice by a [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief). If you filmed the performance, Kompozy's Clipped Shorts pulls captioned vertical cuts of the best scenes for Reels, TikTok, and Shorts.
The multilingual angle is where the two tools compound. Captitles already produced a translated caption track for the show, so Kompozy can run a parallel content pass in that second language — the same recap carousel and clips, captioned and posted for the international audience the translation was meant to reach. Then it schedules and publishes the whole set across the eight social platforms plus blog and email from one queue, on an [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) cadence behind a per-post review gate. Captitles makes the live performance accessible in the room; Kompozy turns the record of that performance into content everywhere else. For the wider shift, see [multilingual auto-translated captions](/guides/multilingual-auto-translated-captions).
Captitles is a Prague-based desktop app (Mac and Windows) for creating, translating, managing, and displaying surtitles for theatre and opera. You import a show's script, its AI detects the spoken lines and turns them into surtitles, and it can translate them into another language in one click. Captions display on external venue screens or on each audience member's own phone or tablet. Its homepage reports use by 600+ institutions.
No. Captitles produces text surtitles and translated captions shown on screens or audience devices; it does not provide British Sign Language or any other sign-language interpretation. It is a written-caption and translation tool, so sign-language access is a separate arrangement.
The app is a free-to-download desktop tool for Mac and Windows. Plans include a free tier, a €75/month subscription for year-round venues, and a €4.99/day rental for festivals and short runs, with lower tiers metering translations, screens, and team members. Confirm current prices on captitles.com.
No. Captitles captions and translates the show for the audience in the room; it does not clip, caption for social, or publish to your channels. But it leaves you with a clean surtitle transcript, which a content engine like Kompozy can repurpose into quote graphics, a highlights carousel, clipped shorts, a recap blog, and a newsletter, then publish across social, blog, and email.