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Zoom Integration: Live Captions and Translation for Zoom Meetings

Overview

This integration brings Maestra live captions to Zoom through the Maestra Live - Transcription & Translation app on the Zoom App Marketplace. Install it once and link your Maestra account, then start real-time transcription and translation from right inside any Zoom meeting.

The app uses Zoom's Real-Time Media Streams (RTMS) to listen to the meeting audio. Captions appear in the app panel right inside the meeting, and Maestra posts a join link into the meeting chat so everyone else can follow along on their own device, in the language they choose. Viewers don't need a Maestra account.

The Maestra Live app running inside a Zoom meeting, showing live captions and translations.

This works with the Zoom desktop app on macOS and Windows. The host installs and links the app once; after that it's available in every meeting.

How it works

There are three steps:

Step 1: Install the Maestra app from the Zoom App Marketplace and link your Maestra account. You only do this once.
Step 2: In your meeting, open the app, pick your languages, and start live captions.
Step 3: Share the caption link with attendees. Maestra posts it into the meeting chat for you.

Captioning spends Maestra credits for every minute a session runs: 1 credit a minute to transcribe, and 5 a minute for each translation language you add. Only the meeting host can start a session, and the host needs the Basic plan or higher.

1. Install the Maestra app from the Zoom App Marketplace

You only need to do this once, from your browser.

Open the app in the Zoom App Marketplace

Open the Maestra Live - Transcription & Translation listing, or go to marketplace.zoom.us and search for Maestra Live.

Add and authorize the app

Click Add, review the permissions Maestra needs, including access to your meetings' real-time audio streams, and click Allow.

The Zoom authorization screen. Review the permissions and click Allow.

Link your Maestra account

After authorizing, you'll be sent to Maestra to link your accounts. Sign in, or create a free account. When it's done, the Zoom card shows Account Linked — open Integrations from the left sidebar, on the Meeting Integrations tab, to check any time.

The Zoom App Marketplace tab in Maestra settings, showing the linked account.

Install and link once. The app is then available in all of your Zoom meetings, on any computer where you sign in to Zoom.

2. Start a captioning session

Start or join the Zoom meeting you want to caption. You need to be the meeting host to start a session.

Open the Maestra app in your meeting

In the meeting toolbar, click Apps (or More → Apps) and open Maestra Live - Transcription & Translation.

Open the Maestra app from the Apps list in the Zoom meeting toolbar.

Choose Transcribe or Translate and pick your languages

Pick the mode you need:

Transcribe — captions in the language being spoken. Leave the speaker language on Detect Language, or choose a specific one.
Translate — choose the speaker's language, then add one or more translation languages.

The setup panel in Translate mode: the speaker language left on Detect Language, one translation language added, and Speaker detection on.

Optional: turn on Speaker Detection

With Speaker detection on, captions are labeled by speaker (Speaker 1, Speaker 2…). Set it before you start.

Start live captions

Press the red microphone button — Press to start captions. Maestra connects to the meeting audio and starts captioning within a few seconds. The panel header switches to Live Captions Active and the captions begin scrolling underneath it.

A running session. The header shows Live Captions Active with the share controls, and the captions scroll below in both languages. — A running session. The header shows **Live Captions Active** with the share controls, and the captions scroll below in both languages.

To stop, press the red stop button under the captions. The session also stops automatically when the meeting ends.

4. Watching inside Zoom

Attendees don't have to leave the meeting to read along. Anyone in the meeting can open the same Maestra Live app from the Apps menu and watch in their own Zoom window.

Before you start, their panel shows Waiting for host. Once you start the session and the join link lands in the chat, they paste it into the panel and the captions appear right there, each attendee reading in the language they pick.

It's the same room either way, so nobody is stuck: attendees on a phone, or anyone who joined by browser, can just open the link from the chat instead.

Webinar setting

Zoom keeps one switch that decides whether apps may receive live audio at all. It ships on for meetings but off for webinars, so a webinar is usually the first place you meet it: the panel reports that Zoom won't share the audio, and no captions appear.

Open your Zoom settings

Go to zoom.us → Settings → Zoom Apps.

Turn on realtime webinar content

Under Webinar, turn on Share realtime webinar content with apps. The Meeting section above has the same switch for meetings, which Zoom leaves on for you.

How it arrives: Meeting is on, Webinar is off. — How it arrives: **Meeting** is on, **Webinar** is off.

How it should look. Turning it on also reveals the auto-start option, which lets the app start without the host clicking anything.

Start the webinar again

If the webinar is already running, end it and start it again after changing the setting.

If the switch is greyed out, a Zoom account admin has locked it. Ask them to turn on Share realtime webinar content with apps under Account Management → Account Settings → Zoom Apps — once, for the whole account.

Troubleshooting

The app says it must be opened inside a Zoom meeting

The app can only start a session from within an active meeting. Join or start a meeting first, then open Maestra Live from the Apps button in the meeting toolbar.

A participant sees "Waiting for host"

Only the meeting host can start a captioning session. Once the host presses the red microphone button, the link appears in the chat and participants can paste it into their own panel to watch.

Captions are not appearing

Check that the panel shows Live Captions Active, that your Zoom account is still linked on the Meeting Integrations tab of Integrations in Maestra, that someone is speaking in the selected source language, and that you have enough Maestra credits. Opening the shared link on another device is a quick way to confirm captions are flowing.

Which language do viewers see?

In Transcribe mode, viewers see the spoken language. In Translate mode, they can pick any translation language you added (or the original) from the join page.

Can the captions go into Zoom's own caption bar?

Not from this app at the moment. Maestra's captions live in the app panel and on the shared link, where every viewer picks their own language. If you specifically need them in Zoom's built-in caption bar, see Zoom Closed Captions for the manual caption-token setup, which works without the Marketplace app.

Uninstall

Removing the integration takes two steps: unlink it in Maestra, then remove the app from Zoom.

Unlink in Maestra

Open Integrations from the left sidebar in Maestra, go to the Meeting Integrations tab, open the Zoom card, and click Remove Channel to unlink your Zoom account.

Remove the app from Zoom

Go to your installed Zoom apps, find Maestra Live - Transcription & Translation, and click Remove.

Completing both steps fully disconnects your Zoom account from Maestra and removes the app from your meetings.