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On Thursday, Google announced an accessibility feature that will be very helpful to many Chrome users: Live Caption. Now you can read what is being said in videos and podcasts playing in the Chrome browser.
Live Caption in Chrome can be useful for those who are hard of hearing, people in noisy places, or folks in situations where listening to audio wouldn’t be appropriate. People can also use Live Caption to help focus on what’s being said as they listen along.
The World Health Organization estimates that 466 million people in the world have disabling hearing loss, including 34 million children. Live Caption in Chrome can help make the spoken word more accessible to these and many other people around the world.
About Chrome Live Caption
If you’ve ever struggled to listen to a podcast or video, you’ll want to try out Chrome Live Caption. You can use Live Caption for video or audio playing in Chrome when listening to voices isn’t feasible. Live Caption works in Chrome on videos you’ve stored in Google Photos, podcasts, video calls, Internet radio stations, embedded videos, and more.
According to Google, Chrome Live Caption “works across social and video sites, podcasts and radio content, personal video libraries (such as Google Photos), embedded video players, and most web-based video or audio chat services.
Chrome Live Caption works through your computer so you can use it offline when you’re using Chrome but not connected to the Internet.
Using Live Caption
You can use Live Caption in a busy restaurant to follow a game, or when you’re in a quiet workplace to watch a video, or when you’re in a video chat to make sure you catch what’s being said, or when you’re in a noisy kitchen to follow a cooking video.
Google tested this feature with one of its software engineers, Laura D’Aquila, who is hard of hearing. She said, “With Live Caption, I no longer have to miss out on watching videos because of lack of captions, and I can engage in real-life conversations with family, friends or colleagues about this content. Just recently, my coworker sent a video to our team’s chat, but it was not captioned. With Live Caption I was able to follow along and share my reactions to the video with my team.”
Google cautions, “Unfortunately, captions aren’t always available for every piece of content.” Also, not every Live Caption translates the spoken word perfectly. For example, in one video I watched the word “loss” was captioned as “laws”. But most words were captioned accurately and rapidly.
This new accessibility feature has the potential to make spoken content available to many more people.
How to Turn On Chrome Live Caption
To use Live Caption, you must first update your Chrome browser to the latest version.
Be sure to save any work-in-progress in open windows before you update as you’ll have to relaunch Chrome to complete the update.
After you’ve finished updating Chrome, click the three dots in the menu bar to open the Settings menu. Click Settings => Advanced => Accessibility.
At the top of the Accessibility menu is the setting for Live Caption. Click the slider to turn it on.
The Live Caption files will download so you can use this feature offline.
This video from Google shows how to turn on Live Caption in Chrome
After you’ve turned Live Caption on, play a video or podcast to see captioning in real-time as audio plays.
Availability of Chrome Live Caption
Live Caption launched on Thursday and is available globally in an update to Chrome. Currently, Live Caption is only available in English.
On computers, Live Caption is available in Chrome on Windows, Mac, and Linux devices. Live Caption is available for audio and video on Android mobile devices. According to Google, Live Caption will be coming soon to ChromeOS.
Your Thoughts
Have you ever struggled to listen to audio or video and wished for captioning? Do you know of anyone who could benefit from Live Caption in Chrome? Will you turn on Live Caption in Chrome? When would you use Live Caption?
Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!
Hi Carolyn
This is new to me. I just tested it on some YouTube videos and it is working 🙂
Not sure I have much use for it, but for sure a nice feature for some people.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Thomas, Yes, captioning can be very useful for those with hearing issues as well as those in noisy or very quiet environments. Turning this feature on and off in Chrome is very easy. You can use it when you want to and turn it off when you don’t need it.