Frequently asked questions

Farol is a Mac app for live events. It shows a camera, capture device or shared screen on the projector, with live captions of what the speaker says along the bottom, in the same language or translated. Farol is Portuguese for lighthouse.

A Mac with macOS 15 or later, an internet connection, and a microphone that can hear the speaker. A second display or projector and a capture device are optional.

No. Captions appear on the screen the room is already watching. Nobody needs to install anything or sign up, including you.

Farol is designed for the room. You can share its audience window in a video-call or streaming app like any other window, but Farol itself doesn't stream or record.

No. Farol never records video or audio. It does save a text transcript of each session on your Mac, which you can review or delete.

Speech can be recognised in 99 languages and regional variants, such as English (US), English (UK), Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). Captions can be translated into 75 languages, including right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. A few spoken languages can be captioned but not yet translated; the app tells you when that's the case.

Accuracy depends mostly on the audio. With a clear microphone close to the speaker, captions are good enough for an audience to follow a talk. Echo, loud music, crosstalk and distant microphones make them worse. Captions are automatic, so unusual names and jargon can come out wrong.

Words appear while the speaker is talking and are corrected as the sentence completes. Translations appear once each phrase is complete, so they follow slightly behind.

Not for every event. For a keynote, a legal setting or an audience that relies on captions for full access, a professional captioner (CART) or interpreter is still the gold standard. Farol makes captions possible at the many events that couldn't otherwise have them.

Yes. Import an image and show it as a sidebar on the left or right of the audience screen, for sponsors, hosts, the Wi‑Fi password or the event hashtag. The sidebar is free.

The app is free to download. Captions use minutes, which you buy in packs inside the app. There's no subscription.

Yes. Claim 15 free minutes in the app, once per Mac, with every feature included.

Captions in the spoken language use 1 minute for every minute they run. Each translated language adds 1 more, so captions plus one translation use 2 minutes per minute. You pay per started minute, and only while captions are running.

For example, a 45-minute talk captioned in English and translated into Portuguese uses 90 minutes.

No. Minutes you buy stay in your balance until you use them.

Farol shows how much time is left while captions run, and you can buy more minutes without stopping. If the balance runs out, captions stop when the paid time ends; the video keeps showing.

Purchases go through the Mac App Store, so refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Only what's needed for captions, and only while they run: microphone audio goes to Amazon Transcribe, and, if you translate, recognised phrases go to Amazon Translate, both in the AWS Europe (Ireland) Region. Video and screen content never leave your Mac.

No. Farol's AWS organisation applies the AWS AI-services opt-out, so audio and text processed for Farol are not used to improve AWS services.

Yes, it's good practice and may be required where you are. Mention at the start that the talk is being captioned live, and check with speakers before you show them on camera or share their screen.

In the privacy policy.