Twitter Rolls Out Automatic Captions for Videos

Twitter is getting automatic captions for videos. The much-awaited functionality started rolling out globally for iOS, Android, and the Web, starting Wednesday, December 15. The auto-captions feature currently support 37 languages. Since translation is not live on Twitter, the captions will show in the language of the device used to upload the clip originally. Auto captions will appear on videos which are muted on both iOS and Android. Desktop users, on the other hand, can switch them on and off. Hearing-challenged users can now watch videos on Twitter with auto-captions on, widening access to more users on the platform.

The Twitter Support team on December 15 tweeted about the new update. The company confirmed that automatic subtitles for videos will be available for all users on Android, iOS and Web starting today. As mentioned, with the new functionality, Twitter users can see captions appear automatically while watching a muted video on mobile. Twitter’s auto-captions are available in more than 30 languages currently, including Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Hindi, Tamil and many more.

Twitter notes that auto-captions will now show on muted videos on iOS and Android, while you can also tap the CC button on the desktop to view auto-caption text after turning your device’s sound off.

The social media company has added many noteworthy changes to its platform and Twitter Spaces recently. It has joined hands with Instagram to ease cross-posting with the launch of Twitter Card previews on Android, iOS, and the Web. Also, Twitter has added a new privacy-related feature that lets users remove a follower without blocking them. Once a Twitter user has removed someone, the user’s tweets will no longer automatically appear in their timeline. It is currently available on the Web version.