Google Chrome Is Giving Live Captions A Serious Readability Upgrade

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Summary

Chrome Canary now allows users to scroll back within a Live Captions bubble for easy re-reading.
A “lock” button ensures the bubble stays put for easy reference.
The update enhances accessibility and usability for those who need it, making video content more inclusive.

Google Chrome is one of the world’s biggest and most popular internet browsers. While that’s undoubtedly because of its connection to the dominant Google Search, another reason is because of Google’s dedication to adding more and more new features. In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of new accessibility options added, and the latest of those is an update that dramatically boosts the usefulness of Chrome’s Live Captions.

As spotted by browser expert Leopeva64, the latest version of Chrome Canary, Chrome’s experimental beta version, includes an upgrade to the already improved Live Captions bubble. Now, rather than having to keep up with the Live Captions as they scroll along, you’ll be able to scroll back the window, re-reading without having to replay the video itself.

A small but very useful upgrade

The crux of this update concerns the Live Captions bubble that pops up whenever the feature is enabled. In previous updates, this bubble was made resizable after also adding live translations by default. But most recently, Live Captions were empowered by AI to read “expressively”. In short, this means Live Captions will elongate vowels if the speaker did. For example, a long “noooooo” rather than just “no”. But the flipside of that would naturally be a decline in ease of reading. As, while this is more accurate, it’s slightly harder to read if a subtitle passes by quickly.

With this new update, readers will be able to scroll back directly within the Live Caption bubble to re-check exactly what’s been said, confirm instructions, or just refresh yourself if you weren’t listening fully. And to make sure the bubble doesn’t jump back to the live translations or captions, there’s also now a “lock” button to keep it in place. When you’re finished, just put it back on “scrolling” to put it back to normal.

As Leopeva64 states, you can even use this to go back through a video’s Live Captions after it’s finished — a boon for anyone who’s sat through a live event and realized they’ve daydreamed through a potentially vital section.

It’s admittedly a small update and easy to miss if you’re not looking for it, but these sorts of accessibility upgrades are enormously helpful for those who need them, and are also useful for anyone watching a video on mute.