Supertitle Help

Everything that used to be crammed into the menu, with room to explain itself.

Getting started

Supertitle lives in the menu bar and lays subtitles over video playing in Safari, Chrome or Brave. It reads the playback position from the browser, which macOS treats as automation and therefore asks permission for. There is nothing to choose: it watches whichever of the three you are in.

Each browser is allowed separately, and you only do it once.

Chrome or Brave

1. Open it.
2. In its menu bar: View → Developer → Allow JavaScript from Apple Events.
3. Play a video. macOS will ask whether Supertitle may control the browser — say yes.

Safari

Safari hides the setting until you ask for it, so there is one extra step.

1. Open Safari.
2. Settings → Advanced → tick “Show features for web developers”.
3. Settings → Developer → tick “Allow JavaScript from Apple Events”.
4. Play a video. macOS will ask whether Supertitle may control Safari — say yes.

Then click the Supertitle icon in the menu bar and pick the language you are learning. Setup shows a tick beside each browser once it is working, so you can see what is done rather than guess.

Then click any word in the subtitle — no key to hold. Resting the pointer on one shows what it means without even clicking.

Languages and dictionaries

A language reaches Supertitle from two directions, and it helps to know which is which.

Subtitles

The seven in the Language picker — Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Norwegian. Supertitle finds and downloads a matching track for you; you never need an account anywhere.

The dictionary panel

That is macOS's own dictionary, not ours, which is why it looks exactly like Dictionary.app. To add one:

1. Open Dictionary.app, then its Settings.
2. Tick the dictionary for your language. Prefer the bilingual one — Spanish - English rather than Español — since a definition written in the language you are still learning is not much help.
3. Reopen Supertitle. It appears under Word lookups → Dictionary.

Not listed there? macOS ships dictionaries for around two dozen languages, and plenty are missing — Icelandic among them. The list is not closed, though. Any dictionary converted to Apple's .dictionary format and placed in ~/Library/Dictionaries appears in that same Settings list, and Supertitle finds it like any other. It is even selected automatically, provided the name carries the language: both Icelandic - English and Íslenska work.

Subtitles running out of sync

Two different faults, with two different fixes, and telling them apart takes one observation: does the error stay the same through the film, or grow?

Same all the way through

The track is from a different release — a cut with a longer distributor logo, say. Use Timing → Offset. The arrows are labelled by what you see happen: if the subtitle arrives after it is spoken, press Sooner. Type a coarse number in first if it is badly out; some releases differ by a full minute. Supertitle remembers the offset per video.

Grows as the film goes on

Then it is not an offset at all — the file was typed for a different frame rate. Pick the conversion under Timing → Frame rate, then set the offset once.

No subtitles found

Supertitle tries the page's own subtitle track first. If the site publishes none — every DRM site renders captions natively and exposes nothing to read — it searches by the video's title instead.

When that finds nothing, the usual causes are:

• The title on the page is not the film's name. Re-titled uploads and compilations have nothing to match against.
• Nobody has typed one up in that language. Common for recent releases and for anything niche.
• You are over the daily limit. Five films a day, to keep one person from spending the shared allowance.

You can always supply your own file with Open Subtitles… (⌘O). SRT and VTT both work.

Licence and billing

Everything is unlocked for seven days, counted from the first word you look up rather than from the day you downloaded it. After that a licence is needed.

Your key arrives by email when you buy. Paste it into Setup → Licence key and press return — the card unlocks on your next click, with no need to restart.

Subscriptions are yearly and handled by Lemon Squeezy. To update a card, change plan or cancel, use Manage subscription in the menu, or the link in your purchase email. Refunds: just ask.

Which tier do I want?

• Supertitle — subtitles and the macOS dictionary.
• Supertitle + Your Own Key — adds meaning and grammar, running on the Claude subscription or API key you already pay for.
• Supertitle Complete — the same, with the AI included. Nothing to configure.

What leaves your Mac

When you click a word, that word and the subtitle line it appeared in go to our server and on to Anthropic, which writes the explanation. When subtitles are fetched, the video's title goes out to search against. Neither the words you look up nor the videos you watch are stored.

Supertitle reads the playback position and page address from your browser to keep subtitles in time. It does not read your history, your other tabs, or the video itself, and nothing is recorded.

The privacy policy sets all of this out in full.

Who makes this

Supertitle is an independent app, made by one person. It is not an official partner of, affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by YouTube, Netflix, HBO Max, Apple, Anthropic, OpenSubtitles or any other company named in this guide. Those names are used only to describe where Supertitle works and what it relies on, and the marks belong to their owners.