TL;DR
- Live Caption lets you easily add captioning to any media you consume on your phone, but so far captions have been forced to use a solid background.
- Google is currently in the midst of rolling out a new option that allows you to set a transparent background for captions.
- Right now it’s only available on newer Pixel models, but will presumably spread to other phones supporting Live Caption.
Modern technology has utterly transformed the availability of captions on the media we consume. Long gone are the days when captioning something was a slow and manual process, and we’ve evolved from services like YouTube being able to automatically generate them, to our phones themselves being able to directly create captions with the help of systems like Live Caption. Last month Google gave Live Caption a big functional upgrade with Expressive Captions, and now captions are getting a little more refinement through a smart interface tweak.
Maybe you’re just a casual caption reader, but others hold some serious preferences when it comes to how their on-screen text is presented. Placement, font, size, color — there are plenty of options that impact how captions are delivered. And now Reddit user andyooo has spotted Live Captions on Android picking up a new transparency option (via 9to5Google).
This change reportedly arrives alongside Google’s Android System Intelligence V.17 update, which began hitting Pixel devices late last month. So far it doesn’t look like Google has made this update available to non-Pixel handsets, or those on older versions of Android.
When this goes live on your phone, you’ll find a new “Background transparency” toggle in Live Caption settings. While we don’t get any kind of fine control over just how opaque the background is, this is still a nice upgrade to get for those of us who are a little particular about our captions.
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