Google’s Live Caption feature will soon support transcribing for more languages. Currently, the accessibility feature only supports transcribing English on Android and Chrome.

According to Android Police, which released a report about the progress of Live Caption's arrival on Chrome OS, Google’s feature could soon add support for transcribing French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. The latest revelation comes just days after Chrome’s new Live Caption feature rolled out support for transcribing speech in videos.

A settings page in Chrome OS describes what the accessibility feature can do. “Automatically creates captions for media in Chrome browser. Audio and captions are processed locally and never leave the device,” an explainer for Live Caption reads, which also lists the different languages. You can also customize the size and style for apps and sites that support Live Captions on this screen.

“Upon selecting a language, your Chromebook will download the language's speech files in seconds,” Android Police said. “Although it shows that it downloaded the files, Chrome OS doesn't yet properly add captions to foreign videos on YouTube. I've also tried playing media on Linux (Beta) and Android apps, but without luck.”

Google’s Live Caption feature was introduced back in 2019 as part of the company’s push to make Android more accessible. It was first rolled out to Pixel phones with Android 10 and then later introduced to other Android devices before being made available in Chrome 89. If you want to test the feature out for yourself in Chrome, you can head to Settings > Advanced > Accessibility.

With a launch imminent on Chromebooks, it's nice to hear Live Caption will soon get an upgrade by adding support for multiple languages. If it means more people around the world can communicate with each other, all the better. We'll let you know as soon as more languages are supported available in a stable release.

Featured image via Android Police