Desktop Floating Subtitle Bar Guide
The floating subtitle window is TransBox’s main control surface: always on top, borderless, and draggable. Hovering expands the StyleBar; moving away collapses it so it stays out of the way of the picture.
1. Window and Subtitle Area
- Position and size: drag the title area to move the window. Width is adjustable (about 620 px up to nearly full screen width). Position is restored after restart.
- Content: a welcome message is shown by default. Once features are on, lines are labeled by speaker prefix, e.g.
[Remote][Translation][Self][Sent]. - Alert capsule: if a local model is missing or a cloud API key is unconfigured, the subtitle area shows an actionable prompt (jump to Settings / switch to local / download).
2. Control Bar: Three-Row Layout
Row 1 · Listening to the remote party (top track)
Common controls left to right:
| Control | Description |
|---|---|
| Audio source | “All system audio” / a specific meeting app (by process) / “🌐 Browser captions” after enabling the browser caption service |
| Source language | Auto, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, French, German, Spanish, Russian |
| Target language | Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, French, German, Spanish, Russian |
| Source | Toggle ASR source transcript (Alt+S) |
| Translation | Toggle machine translation (Alt+D) |
| Read aloud | Toggle TTS (Ctrl+Shift+R) |
| Duck original audio | Appears only when Read aloud is on; ducks other apps’ volume while speaking |
| Read-aloud device | Route translated speech to headphones and similar, to avoid bleed into system speakers |
| Two-way call | Expand Row 2 (our speech) |
| UI language | Cycle through enabled interface languages |
| History / Settings / Exit | Open the History panel, Settings, or quit |
Important: the top-track pipeline starts only after you turn on Source / Translation / Read aloud. With all three off, the GPU and microphone are not held continuously.
Row 2 · Our speech (bottom track)
Expanded after you click [Two-way call]:
| Control | Description |
|---|---|
| Microphone | Off / system default / a specific device |
| I speak → | Default “Auto” |
| Remote hears → | Default “English” |
| Send mode | Inject translation (requires VB-CABLE) or Pass original audio |
| Mute | Temporarily mute our microphone |
Row 3 · Style fine-tuning (appears on hover)
Instant adjustments; not in the Settings tabs:
- Font size − / value / +
- Text color, background color (curated palette + full spectrum + hex + reset)
- Text opacity, background opacity
Font size hotkeys: Ctrl+= to enlarge, Ctrl+- to shrink.
3. Mouse Passthrough (Avoid Accidental Clicks in Games)
If the subtitle window covers the crosshair or skill bar, it can block clicks.
- Press
Alt + Lto enable passthrough: clicks and scroll pass through to the game window below. - Press
Alt + Lagain to restore drag and click. - You can also check the tray menu or status hints in Settings to confirm whether passthrough is active.
4. Show/Hide and Boss Key
| Need | Action |
|---|---|
| Hide subtitles quickly | Double-click the tray icon / menu “Show/Hide subtitle window” / Boss key Ctrl+Shift+H |
| Start/stop the full interpretation pipeline | Ctrl+Shift+T or tray “Start/Pause live interpretation” |
| Hide only source or translation | Alt+S / Alt+D |
5. Tips
- Meetings: pick the meeting app process as the audio source to reduce misrecognition of system beeps.
- Games: enable passthrough + the boss key. If subtitles disappear in exclusive fullscreen, try windowed or borderless fullscreen.
- Watching video: prefer browser caption passthrough — more stable than recording system audio.
- Read-aloud disturbing others: point Read-aloud device at headphones and keep Duck original audio on.