How to Customize Chrome Live Subtitles on Your Desktop
Google recently added Live Captions to the desktop version of Chrome. If Live Subtitles are enabled, Chrome will automatically decrypt any audio played in the browser, even if the audio is muted.
This feature is similar to YouTube’s auto-transcription capabilities, but works for all audio played through Chrome, including videos, podcasts, and voice calls. It also works with Chrome Progressive Web Apps (PWA) like YouTube and YouTube Music, and this feature is also available on select Android devices .
Live Subtitling is a useful accessibility feature for the hearing impaired or any user who wants to follow video and other audio media but cannot turn on audio. However, at the moment, its speech recognition is not perfect. I noticed that Chrome was having trouble recognizing speakers with a strong accent or poor audio quality, with live subtitles only available for English audio on startup. However, even with these limitations, Live Captions is a welcome feature that will hopefully get better as Google continues to update its accuracy and add support for other languages.
How to enable live subtitles on the Chrome desktop
The Live Subtitles option in Chrome is disabled by default. Turning on subtitles is easy, but there are a few steps you need to follow before you can actually use the feature.
First, make sure Chrome is up to date. Live subtitles are only available in Chrome 89 (or later). To update, open Chrome and choose Help> About Google Chrome or Settings> About Chrome . Click to install the update, if available.
With Chrome 89 installed, you can enable live subtitles in your browser settings:
- In Chrome, go to Settings> Advanced> Accessibility.
- Turn on Live Subtitles. Chrome will download the required speech recognition files, which will only take a few seconds. When the function is ready, you will see “Downloaded Speech Files” under “Live Subtitles”.
- Live subtitles should automatically start decrypting whenever the browser detects audio. If not, click the media icon to open the Chrome playback controls (it’s the button in the upper right corner between the Chrome browser extensions toolbar and your Google account profile icon). Make sure Live Subtitles is turned on.
Live subtitles appear in a window at the bottom of the browser tab where audio is playing. You can customize the size and appearance of the Title Window under Preferences> Advanced> Accessibility> Title Settings .
If you decide you don’t need interactive subtitles at this time, press X to close the subtitle window and disable it for the current media, or turn off Live Subtitles in the Chrome Media Control Panel to disable them. fully.
[ MakeUseOf ]