Real-time Korean translation on your Mac
Updated 2026-08-23
To follow Korean as it is spoken — a K-drama the night it airs, a variety show nobody subtitles, a Seoul team on Zoom, a phone call to a clinic — run Tingdong on your Mac. It listens to whatever is playing, detects Korean automatically, and floats English captions over it while the sentence is still being spoken. Call Translation adds the other direction: you speak English, they hear Korean.
How to set it up
- 1Open Tingdong and choose “Live Listen”
Pick “Screen sound” so it hears exactly what the show or meeting plays. Korean is detected, not selected.
- 2Press Start
Captions float over the player or the meeting window: Korean on top, English below.
- 3For a call, switch to “Call Translation”
Choose Tingdong Microphone in the app’s mic menu, or hand an iPhone call to the Mac over Bluetooth. Your English reaches them as a Korean voice; their Korean comes back as English captions.
Why K-dramas beat auto-translated subtitles
Korean packs politeness levels, dropped subjects and rapid-fire banter into short sentences, and auto-translated subtitle tracks — which translate one line at a time with no memory of the last — turn that into nonsense. Tingdong translates a continuous stream of speech and keeps context across lines, so dialogue reads like dialogue. It also does not care where the video plays: Netflix, Viki, YouTube, Weverse or a local file all get the same floating captions, and a live broadcast with no subtitle track at all works just as well.
Frequently asked questions
Does it work on Korean shows with no subtitles at all?
Yes — that is the main reason people use it. It listens to the audio, not a subtitle track, so raw broadcasts, live streams and variety shows work the same as subtitled Netflix.
Can it translate a phone call with someone in Korea?
Yes. Hand the iPhone call to your Mac over Bluetooth and Tingdong interprets both ways: they hear a Korean voice alongside yours, you read their replies as English captions. Nothing to install on their side.
Does it handle Korean mixed with English?
Yes. Language is detected per phrase among 60 inputs, so a meeting that drifts between Korean and English, or a guest switching to Japanese, just keeps working.
How much does an episode cost?
Captions are 1 credit per minute — a 70-minute episode is 70 credits. Every new Mac gets 100 free credits on install; after that the monthly membership covers about 16 hours of viewing.
Try it on your next video, meeting or call
Download free for macOS100 trial credits on install · No signup, no credit card