Google has been testing Live Captions for Chrome on PC since May last year when the feature first appeared on Chrome Canary. Now all Chrome users on a computer can use real-time captions, as long as they install version 89 of the browser’s stable version. As noted by XDA Developers, the latest version of the browser has a new accessibility section under Advanced in Preferences that allows users of Live Captions to switch. When they turn it on, they see captions for any audio and video they play in their browser in the English language.
When technology giant Launched Live Captions in 2019, it was initially only available for the Pixel 4. Eventually, it moved to other Pixel models before being available on other mobile devices, such as the Galaxy S20 and the OnePlus 8. It also had at first did not work for phone calls, only on any media that plays audio. Nearly a year after it came out, however, Google unveiled Live Caption for calls on Pixel devices.
We successfully tested the feature using videos on YouTube and Facebook and can confirm XDA’s observation that it will work even if the video is muted. At this point, however, the sound must be in English – it does not yet recognize any other language. The captions appear in a window at the bottom of the screen, which users can expand or close if they do not need to.