Google is expanding its real-time caption feature, Live Captions, from Pixel phones to anyone using a Chrome browser, as first spotted by XDA Developers. Live Captions uses machine learning to spontaneously create captions for videos or audio where none existed before and making the web that much more accessible for anyone who’s deaf or hard of hearing.
According to Indian Express it worked for YouTube videos, podcast players, WhatsApp audio or video files, and other content. However, the Live Caption in Chrome took some time to download speech recognition files when playing a Podcast. The feature struggled to immediately display captions.
We did get spontaneous captions once the speech recognition files were downloaded. You just need to reload the site once the files are downloaded. The feature worked perfectly fine when we played WhatsApp video/audio content and YouTube videos.
How to enable Live Caption feature on Chrome?
Once you come across any video, Chrome will ask you if you want to use the Live Caption feature. You can enable this feature by tapping on the music icon located near the Extension icon. Once you tap on the music icon, a box will appear which lets you enable the Live Caption feature.
After enabling it, you don’t need to follow the same steps to use that feature for other videos. Live Captions will automatically appear in a small, moveable box at the bottom of your browser when you are watching or listening to any video. One will notice Live Captions even when the audio is muted or the volume is down. So, if you don’t have a pair of wireless earphones and want to watch a video without disturbing anyone around you, then this feature will come in handy.
