Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 October 2026. This explains what AfricaCaptions collects, how it is used, and the choices you have. AfricaCaptions is a free, browser-based subtitle and caption editor, built so that your work stays on your own device.

The short version

You can caption and translate without an account. Your captions and translations are saved in your browser on this device, and video files you open play in your browser. The captions and translations you type are not sent to us. Automatic captions, AI translation and sign-in are coming soon and are not switched on yet. When they are, automatic captions will need you to sign in with your email, and only the parts of the audio that have sound are sent to our speech service to be turned into text. We do not sell your data or run advertising trackers.

What we collect

Basic technical data. Like most sites, our host may log standard request information (such as IP address and browser type) for security and reliability. Caption text for AI translation (coming soon). When you press Auto-translate, the caption text and the language you chose are sent through our translation service to our AI provider. We do not store it.

Your account (coming soon). If you sign in, we keep your email address, your plan, and how many automatic-caption minutes you used each month. Sign-in codes are stored only as a scrambled code and expire after 10 minutes.

Audio for automatic captions (coming soon). When you press Auto-generate captions, your browser finds the parts of the video that have sound and sends only the audio of those parts to our speech service. The service runs Meta's Omnilingual speech recognition model on servers rented from Modal. The audio and the text it produces are not stored on our servers and are not used to train models.

Payments. AfricaCaptions does not take payments yet. Before the paid Plus plan goes on sale, we will update this page to say who processes payments and what we keep.

What stays on your device

Your captions and translations are kept in your browser's local storage. Video files you open from your computer and subtitle files you import are read in your browser and never uploaded. When you paste a video link, your browser loads the video directly from where it is hosted (for example YouTube), and that service's own privacy terms apply.

Services we rely on

We use a small set of third-party providers to run the service: cloud hosting and content delivery, and Google Fonts for the typefaces (Google receives your IP address when the fonts load). When the coming features are switched on, we will also use an AI provider for translation, an email service for sign-in codes and Modal for speech recognition. Under its API terms, our AI provider does not use the text we send to train its models.

Cookies and local storage

We use your browser's local storage to save your captions and translations on your device. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. If you play a YouTube or Vimeo video in the editor, that service may set its own cookies. When sign-in is switched on, a session token will be saved in your browser's local storage to keep you signed in.

Your choices

We do not keep your captions on our servers. You can delete a project or clear your captions at any time from the editor, or by clearing this site's data in your browser. Once accounts are switched on, you can delete yours by emailing support@africacaptions.com from the address you signed in with.

Children

AfricaCaptions is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

If we update this policy we will post the new version here with a revised date.