Live Caption is a new feature that automatically captions all media playing on your phone. The feature leverages Google's AI smarts to essentially create live subtitles for everything you're watching or listening to on your phone, whether it's a movie, video, or even a podcast. The best part is that it's baked into your Galaxy S20, although it's not on by default. Here's how to turn it on.
How to turn on Live Caption on the Galaxy S20
- Open Settings from the home screen.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
- Go to Accessibility.
- Select Hearing enhancements.
- Hit Live Caption.
- Toggle Live Caption to On.
- In the dialog box, tap Got it to enable the feature.
- Toggle Hide profanity to automatically switch out profane words into asterisk symbols.
Live Caption is a particularly useful feature if you're hard of hearing, deaf, or just looking to watch a video without any sound. It is unerringly accurate at transcribing audio, and when you consider the fact that it is doing so in real-time, it only becomes more enticing. Oh, and it is doing all of this on-device without connecting to the internet, and the transcribed subtitles are never sent to Google.
Another factor in its favor is that it works on all audio sources, including audio messages you record yourself. The one caveat is that the service is limited to English for the time being, and it doesn't work on music or audio calls.
The phone that does it all
The Galaxy S20 has everything you'll ever need from a phone: it is packing the absolute latest internal hardware, 5G connectivity, exciting new camera tech with 30x hybrid zoom and 8K video recording, and a 4000mAh battery. Oh, and the screen has a buttery smooth 120Hz refresh rate, and the software has more customization options than you'll know what to do with.
Harish Jonnalagadda is a Senior Editor overseeing Asia at Android Central. He leads the site's coverage of Chinese phone brands, contributing to reviews, features, and buying guides. He also writes about storage servers, audio products, and the semiconductor industry. Contact him on Twitter at @chunkynerd.
