Google Chrome features a powerful accessibility tool called “Live Caption.” When enabled, the browser utilizes a downloaded speech recognition model to automatically generate real-time subtitles for any video or audio playing within a tab, displaying them in a floating black box at the bottom of your screen.
While this is an incredible feature for the hearing impaired or for watching videos in a noisy environment without headphones, it can be extremely annoying if it turns on accidentally. The floating box covers up the actual video content, and the live transcription uses a noticeable amount of CPU power. You can completely disable Live Captions to ensure the floating box never appears.
How to Turn Off Live Captions in Google Chrome
You can disable the auto-generation feature directly from Chrome’s accessibility settings.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click the three vertical dots (⋮) in the top-right corner of the window.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Accessibility.
- Look at the very top of the main window for the setting labelled Live Caption (with the description “Automatically creates captions for English audio and video”).
- Click the toggle switch next to it to turn it Off (the switch will turn grey).
The floating black subtitle box will instantly vanish from any currently playing videos, and Chrome will stop attempting to transcribe audio in the background. If you ever need the feature again for a specific video, you can always toggle it back on from the same menu.