Captions on services like Netflix and YouTube are essential for those with hearing impairments—and they’re a convenient option for everyone when we’re in noisy environments or have to watch videos in silence.
Our phones and laptops are now intelligent enough to begin automatically captioning both audio and video streams.
That means you can access captions no matter where you are watching or listening to something, whether on social media or in a podcast app.
This feature is still in its early stages on various platforms, and the AI behind the technology isn’t always reliable, but it’s now available on almost every device.
Android
Live Captions for Android
At the time of writing, Live Caption on Android was only available on Pixel phones and “other select Android phones,” so your device may not have it.
On Pixel devices, go to Settings, then Accessibility and Live Caption, and finally toggle the Use Live Caption switch on. You can also access it by pressing a volume button and then tapping the bottom icon on the resulting slider.
The same technology is used in recent flagship Samsung Galaxy phones, though in a slightly different location.
If you’re using a Galaxy phone, go to Settings > Accessibility, then select Hearing Enhancements and Live Caption.
Again, you’ll see a simple toggle switch along with the same options as on Google phones (including an option for blocking out profanity).
That’s it—whenever audio or video is playing and speech is detected, live captions will appear in the centre of the screen.
It’s worth noting that the feature works regardless of your phone’s volume level, so you can have your phone muted and still see captions on the screen.
iOS
If you have an iPhone 11 or later, live captioning is available in beta, so proceed with caution—you may encounter one or two issues along the way (and for the time being, it is only available if your phone is set to use US English).
Overall, the feature should function properly. To enable it, go to the iOS Settings app and choose Accessibility, then Live Captions (Beta).
When you turn on the Live Captions toggle switch, iOS will begin listening for audio—you’ll notice an overlay at the bottom of the screen to that effect.
You can also change the appearance of the live captions on the screen by adjusting the text size, colour, and even the opacity of the overlay to your liking. You may also see apps listed that you can enable live captioning for individually.
Start playing something with audio through an app, and the captions should appear on screen regardless of whether your phone is currently muted (though you may have to wait for the necessary files to download first).
It will even work on live conversations taking place around you. More options are available by tapping the floating overlay (including the option to pause live captions).
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