Chrome Introduces Live Caption

Dennis Snider

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Captions are essential on Internet videos for many people, not just the many millions around the world who suffer from hearing problems but also those who are in environments where they don’t want to have audio playing or where it is simply too noisy to hear what’s going on.

If you want captions on your videos, Google Chrome has a new Live Caption feature that can help you achieve this easily. Firstly, make sure that you have the latest version of Chrome installed, as older versions won’t have it. Then simply go to the options menu (top right hand corner of the screen) and choose Settings >Advanced >Accessibility >Live Caption. The new feature will listen for the words spoken in your video and produce captions for you. One of the big advantages of the new capability is that captions are generated directly on the computer without any need for an Internet connection, so you can caption your video any time, anywhere, and you can even caption videos that are stored on your hard drive.

There are a couple of drawbacks to this new feature: firstly, it’s not perfect in terms of accuracy, but then no captioning software is. Initial trials indicate that it works extremely well, far better than might be expected from a free offering. At present Live Caption is only available in English, but it may expand to other popular languages later. It’s available both for Android phones and on any desktop running Google Chrome.