Google turns on live captions in desktop version Chrome

Google has turned on the live captioning feature in the desktop version of its Chrome browser. The function for the time being only works in English.

The feature is in the stable version of Chrome 89, XDA-Developers discovered . Live subtitles can be turned on by going to ‘advanced’ in the settings and then turning the slider under ‘accessibility’. The subtitles then appear in white letters in a gray rectangle at the bottom of the screen.

Google has been working on the feature for the desktop version of Chrome for some time. Called “Live Caption” in English, live caption was a new feature in Android 10 for Pixel phones in 2019. Then it slowly became available on other smartphones as well. The option to turn on automatically generated subtitles has also been in YouTube for some time; the feature works wherever the user plays media.

Live Subtitles scans the audio of videos to be played and attempts to subtitize them using machine learning. Created primarily for the deaf and hard of hearing, the feature can also be found in the accessibility menu.