Google, on Thursday, made it official that the ‘Live Caption’ is now available on its Chrome (Desktop) browser. This new feature, which is targeted at the Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, helps to generate captions for audio content played in real-time using the Chrome web browser.
Google confirmed in a blog post that allows the captions (which are created on-device) to appear as the content plays without ever having to leave your computer. Live Caption also works offline, so you can even caption audio and video files saved on your hard drive when you play them in Chrome.
The feature 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.
To turn on Live Caption in Chrome from your desktop, follow these few steps as outlined by Google in its YouTube video;
Step 1: Go to Settings,
Step 2: Click on the Advanced section,
Step 3: Go to the Accessibility section.
Step 4: Enable ‘Live Caption’.
The feature currently supports English and is available globally on the latest release of Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux devices and will be coming soon to ChromeOS. For Android devices, Live Caption is already available for any audio or video on your mobile device.
Google announced in December that Live Caption support in its video collaboration app Meet for four additional languages — French, German, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (Spain and Latin America).
Google Meet uses speech-to-text technology to provide live captions in meetings which help participants who may be deaf or hard of hearing follow along and stay engaged. With a single tap, Live Caption automatically captions speech on your device and soon on Chrome on desktop.
Google’s Live Caption feature is similar to ‘Live Transcribe’. The only difference is, while Live Transcribe listens to what people around are saying and prints it out on a phone’s display, Live Caption processes the audio from videos, podcasts and other sources to provide you with real-time captions.
