In-demand Android feature finally makes it to the Pixel 2 series

One of the Pixel 4 series new features is called Live Caption, and as the name suggests it provides a real-time caption of any video, podcast, and audio message at any time, even if the phone is offline. For example, let's say that you're in the library and want to watch a movie on your phone but haven't a pair of earbuds. Well, you don't want to raise the ire of the librarian now, do you? With Live Caption, you can turn the sound off and watch the video while still understanding exactly what is going on in the film. You can even use it on an airplane with airplane mode enabled.

The Pixel 4 series came with Live Caption right out of the box, and last month's initial quarterly Pixel feature drop brought it to the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a lines. And now, according to some Reddit posters, Live Caption is available for the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. But whether Google is bringing this out officially to the 2017 Pixels is not yet clear. Some of the Redditors had to sideload an APK. But it appears that an update to Device Personalization Services also is adding Live Captions to the Pixel 2 family.

Once the feature hits your Pixel 2, you enable Live Caption by going to Settings > Sound >Live Caption. Or, you might find an extra box underneath the volume slider that will allow you to enable or disable Live Caption. The feature uses automatic speech recognition to provide Android with the ability to deliver captions system-wide. Now we should point out that several video apps already have settings for captions and captions on older television shows are often edited to perfection. But Live Caption will also work on unscripted television news streams like the one available on the CNN app in real-time.

So if you have a phone belonging to the Pixel 2 line, keep your eyes peeled for an update to the Device Personalization Services app. Or, you can install it from the Google Play Store.