One of the most underrated Android features coming to Chrome

This story was originally published 2021/02/25
04:47 PSTon 25 February 2021 and last updated 2021/03/18
10:31 PDTon 18 March 2021.

Live Caption is one of the most underrated features that has come to Android in years. Whether you are hard of hearing, deaf, in a harsh environment or forget to take your headphones with you, it automatically transcribes any sound coming from your phone. We have known for a long time that Live Caption is also on its way to Chrome, and you can even activate it via a flag in Chrome 88. And today, Google announced that the feature is now available to everyone.

Live Caption automatically transcribes audio from your browser tabs, just like on Android, and subtitles all the audio content you can imagine, including video or audio chat services or your private Google Photos library. The captions are generated on your device so that sound never moves through extra servers. It even works offline.

Google confirms that Live Caption is functional on Windows, macOS and Linux. It only works with English for now, but more languages ​​are coming. To enable Live Caption, go to Chrome settings via the three-point menu in the top right corner (⋮) and look for it in the accessibility section. Chrome OS support will be available soon, though you can already get it via the chrome: // flags / # enable-accessibility-live-caption flag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDP8a5s possibleU

It’s great to see that one of Android’s more innovative features makes more Google products, which makes life easier for those who are hard of hearing and deaf. And ordinary people can also benefit from it if they are in noisy environments without headphones or if they have to keep up the volume.