What you need to know
- Twitter is rolling out closed captions for videos on its platform.
- The subtitles can be enabled during playback with the new floating "CC" button.
- Captions are available for videos in more than 30 languages.
Twitter is rolling out a closed caption toggle for videos, coming to users globally across iOS and Android. The video captions feature was first tested by the website back in April. Although that was a test consisting of a small group of iOS users, the company announced on Friday that it has begun rolling out to everyone on both the mobile platforms.
If you come across a video with available captions on your feed, clicking on it would automatically present you with a "CC" button on the top right corner of the playback. Tapping it would display the subtitles/captions at the bottom, similar to what we're used to on YouTube and other video platforms.
The social media site announced the new feature via its Twitter Support account, showcasing a demo video that was first featured a couple of months ago when it first began testing.
The choice is now yours: the closed caption toggle is now available for everyone on iOS and Android!Tap the “CC” button on videos with available captions to turn the captions off/on. https://t.co/GceKv68wviJune 23, 2022
The announcement post, however, doesn't specify whether there would be options to edit the closed captions feature, like changing fonts or their sizes, for instance. As the rollout has just initiated, we expect there could be improvements down the road given enough feedback from the Twitterati.
Closed captions are currently supported in more than 30 languages, although they will only be available in the video's original language, at least for now.
Twitter seems to be on a spree in rolling out features for its users. Recently, the app made its ALT badge widely available to give users quick access to image descriptions.
This month, the social media platform introduced Twitter Notes feature, a long-form writing option similar to Medium and Substack.
The Notes feature allows users to write longer content without the traditional 280-character limit and will enable users to write more comprehensive content. It has a new team dubbed Twitter Write, which manages the Notes segment on the social media platform. It is available as a test in select countries for now.
