Android’s ‘Live Caption’ feature may soon work during phone calls

Ben Schoon | Apr 24 2020 - 12:49 pm PT

Google first introduced its Live Caption feature in Android 10, and in the time since, it’s expanded past Pixels to devices from OnePlus and Samsung. Now it seems Google is planning to expand where you can use the feature by enabling Live Caption to work with phone calls.

Spotted by XDA, an updated version of Live Caption within Android 11’s third developer preview strongly hints that phone call support is coming. The strings below — emphasis outs — are pulled from version 2.13.302920511 of Device Personalization Services and mention the functionality pretty explicitly.

<string name=”call_confirmation_cancel”>CANCEL</string>

<string name=”call_confirmation_confirmation_message”>Enable Live Caption over this phone call? Your use of the feature will be annonunced to others on the call.</string>

<string name=”call_confirmation_dialog_name”>Enable Live Caption confirmation dialog</string>

<string name=”call_confirmation_enable”>ENABLE</string> <string name=”call_other_side_transcription_prefix”>Caller</string>

<string name=”call_system_message_prefix”>System</string>

<string name=”call_turn_indicator_text”>…</string>

<string name=”call_user_typed_input_prefix”>You typed</string>

Apparently, when Live Caption is enabled during a call, the users on the other end will hear an audible dialog that says “Hi, the person you’re about to speak with has call captions turned on. They’ll see captions of what you say to help them listen along.”

It’s unclear when this functionality will arrive, but it seems possible the final Android 11 could bring it.