Transcript UI

Understand how the Convai Unity SDK separates durable chat history from speech-aligned captions, and which built-in component displays each.

ConvaiManager.ActiveManager.Transcripts is the single entry point for transcript data in the Convai Unity SDK. It exposes two purposes side by side — a durable turn-by-turn chat history and a stream of speech-aligned captions — so your scene UI can show conversation history and live subtitles without building either pipeline yourself. Custom transcript displays subscribe directly through ConvaiManager.ActiveManager.Transcripts — see the durable and caption paths below.

How transcript data reaches your scene UI

The runtime's internal transcript engine maintains room state and exposes it through the ConvaiTranscripts facade at ConvaiManager.ActiveManager.Transcripts. That facade splits into two independent read paths.

Both paths read from the same room session, so a character's speech always appears in history and, if a caption UI is present, as a caption at the same time.

Neither path is scoped to a single character. For a push notification tied to one ConvaiCharacter's own spoken line — outside of scene UI, for example a gaze or gesture trigger — see ConvaiCharacter.OnTranscriptReceived in Transcript API.

Durable chat history vs. speech-aligned captions

CurrentTimeline, Subscribe, and SubscribeCommitted give you the durable side of the transcript: a timeline of committed conversation turns that persists for the life of the room, suitable for scroll-back chat panels, post-session review, and export. ChatTranscriptUI is built on this path.

CurrentCaptions and SubscribeCaptions give you the ephemeral side: text aligned to what is currently being spoken, replaced as soon as the next segment starts. Caption text is never written into the durable chat history — it exists only to drive a subtitle-style overlay. SubtitleTranscriptUI is built on this path.

Choose the durable path when the reader needs to see or query what was said. Choose the caption path when the reader needs to see what is being said right now.

Built-in presentation components

ChatTranscriptUI ships as a ready-to-use component with two prefabs in the com.convai.convai-sdk-for-unity package: Prefabs/TranscriptUI/TranscriptUI_Chat.prefab for a screen-space chat panel, and Prefabs/TranscriptUI/TranscriptUI_Chat_WorldSpace.prefab for the same component rendered on a world-space Canvas — for example a panel mounted above a character or kiosk. Both prefabs subscribe to the durable timeline on Start (and re-subscribe on OnEnable) and render committed and in-progress turns as message bubbles.

SubtitleTranscriptUI ships as sample reference code at SamplesShared/Scripts/UI/Transcript/Subtitle/SubtitleTranscriptUI.cs rather than a drop-in prefab. It subscribes to captions and renders the current speaker's text with auto-hide after a configurable delay, and is meant to be copied into your project and adapted.

Neither component is the only option. Any script can call Subscribe, SubscribeCommitted, or SubscribeCaptions directly to drive a custom display.

Hide presentation without losing history

IsPresentationEnabled and the PresentationEnabledChanged event let shipped presentation components hide their rendered content — for example while a cutscene or menu is on screen — without stopping the room from recording. ChatTranscriptUI and SubtitleTranscriptUI both clear their rendered content when presentation is disabled, then resubscribe with replay enabled when it turns back on, so no turns are lost from the durable history while the UI was hidden.

Next steps

You have covered how the durable and caption paths split and which shipped component reads each. Continue to querying the durable timeline from code, configuring the two built-in display modes, or controlling transcript visibility from the settings panel.

Transcript history and queriesChat and subtitle modesSettings panel