Get real-time subtitles on any audio or video on your phone with Android Q's Live Caption feature

One of the most useful features coming to Android Q makes it easier for the hard of hearing or deaf users to understand what’s happening in video and audio clips they’re watching or listening to. Live Caption will let you see any audio or video clip transcribed in real time, which The Verge’s Chris Welch is said to be done “with extremely accurate results.” The Live Caption is overlaid on top of whatever media app you’re using. It even works for video chat apps like Skype and Google Duo as well as with video or audio you record yourself. It makes use of on-device machine learning so it doesn’t have to send your data to the cloud to interpret what’s happening. It also works even when volume is turned down or muted. However, it won’t save the translations for later use.

The captions, which appear in a black box that you can move around, disappear when the content is over. It is turned off by default, but you can enable the feature in your phone’s accessibility settings. These can then be enabled through a software icon that appears in the volume UI pop-up. The feature will prove to be useful even to those without hearing problems. Imagine being on a crowded train and just wanting to watch a clip without having to turn up the volume to hear what’s happening or use it as a guide for transcribing.

Android Q Beta adds Dark Theme

The Verge

It’s a trend we’re seeing across platforms and it’s making a system-wide debut on Android Q Beta 3. Dark Mode, or Dark Theme as Google calls it, comes to the latest version of the operating system that just dropped. And as The Verge’s Dieter Bohn points out, it’s true black and not dark grey, which theoretically could mean this could help save battery life. To activate it, you just need to pull down the Quick Settings menu, tap a button, and watch the interface change. If you use battery saver mode on Android 10 Q, that’ll also trigger Dark Theme.

As expected, the feature is rolling out to first-party Android apps. For third-party developers, Google plans to develop an API to let these apps know when Dark Theme is on, so their app switches to it as well. The company is giving developers an option to add one line of code into their app to create a “quick-and-dirty” version of Dark Theme. This might be a hack, but it could be used in the meantime before they implement a more elegant Dark Theme—if they choose to do so.