It was May 2019 when Google first announced Live Captions and the company finally introduced this feature for Chrome browser. In a nutshell, Live Captions are automatically generated subtitles on any video and audio platform, be it YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, or Google Podcasts. It first came to the Google Pixel, then to other mobile phones such as the Galaxy S20 and, finally, this feature is coming to Google Chrome for desktop.
The feature is now available in Google Chrome 89, the latest version of the browser, and for now, it only works in English. In any case, it is a really useful feature for watching videos in English that have not been subtitled, and even for listening to podcasts or interviews in English. Below we are going to see how to activate this feature in the browser.
Live Captions feature is coming to the Google Chrome browser
The feature is available now in Google Chrome 89, to activate it, simply follow these steps:
- We open the options menu (the three little dots at the top right).
- Select “Settings”.
- Go to “Advanced Settings”.
- Select “Accessibility”.
- We activate “Live Caption”
Google Chrome will download some text transcription files to the computer and the captions will start working automatically. You don’t really have to do anything to activate them, just start watching a video for example. When it starts playing and if someone talks you will be able to see the Live Captions.
These are displayed in a black window superimposed at the bottom of the screen. If we click on the little arrow, we can expand it. The system works even with the audio turned off (interesting if we want to know what a person says in the video but do not want to have the audio on). But we can’t copy the transcribed text, it should be some kind of security measure.
