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Live Captions!

Live Captions are here for you wherever you are (unless you're not on Google Chrome 😅).

Firstly what are are they? Basically auto generated subtitles for whatever you are watching and they can even translate from one language to another for you in real time.

I love this, a lot of the time I find audio distracting and I also have difficulty hearing; so when I'm watching that latest tech tutorial I use Closed Captions.

You might have noticed most of my articles are inspired by a problem I solved and wanted to share my journey. So an aside, Brave browser a Chromium based browser while having great built in ad blocking features and speed built in actually really lacks accessibility!? (It is literally missing the settings tab "accessibility")

macOS also has this setting but it can be tricky to get going, it's tied to photobooth for some reason https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchldd11f4fd/mac

There are some other options thankfully, I recently discovered the SpeechRecognisition API via VueUse There is a demo on VueUse it seems fairly accurate.

There are a few more advanced libraries that require a little more setup like openai's whisper; you need to register for an API key. If you're looking for a quick javascript-y way to try it out I've found:

  • voice-writing-electron
  • and Whisper's own electron project (currently $0) WhisperScript Not sure it's just me but any project with Whisper in the name about code really excites me.

I haven't personally tested but Windows has LiveCaptions too.

I have tried various Linux/Ubuntu solutions with subpar success, I think Chrome is the best bet.

There are some awesome companies making use of this technology to improve you're work life already such as SuperNormal; If you have trouble hearing or don't want to be distracted by taking meeting notes I found this plugin works extremely well. It automatically syncs to your google calendar and creates really beautiful meeting notes with action items and everything. I found the free tier all I needed, this may sound sponsored but it's not. The one caveat check with your legal/IT you are allowed to use any plugins at work, I got bit in the backside by this although it is completely AI driven it may be considered by some 👴 old companies/CTO's as a security breach.

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