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Live Captions for Chrome and Chrome OS has been in the works for a few months now but today we’re finally getting our first look at the accessibility feature in action. The features, which will greatly mimic Live Captions found on Pixel Phones and other, select Android devices. While it is still a work in progress for Chrome, the feature is live in the Canary build of the Chrome browser and it is quite impressive. You can check out Live Captions by downloading the Chrome Canary browser on your Windows or Mac device. Don’t worry, you can still use your Stable Chrome browser for your normal browsing.
Next, head to chrome://flags/#enable-accessibility-live-captions in your browser and enable the Live Captions flag. From there, restart your browser and head to the accessibility settings in Chrome Canary. Make sure Live Captions is toggled on then head over to YouTube or your favorite video site. Load up a video and watch the magic happen. You should see the Live Captions overlay loading text as your video plays. Check out this quick video below.
The amazing part about this new feature is its ability to capture the audio and turn it into text in real time. As you see on Android devices, the text autocorrects in real time as the context of the audio is understood by the Live Captioning AI. It’s far from perfect but it is really, really good. The Live Captions feature is showing up on Chrome OS Canary as well but currently is still disabled even with the flag and toggle turned on. I suspect we will see Live Captions go “live” when Chrome and Chrome OS 85 roll out in late summer of this year.
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