When Google introduced Live Caption for the Pixel 4 devices, it became one of those features that all Android users wanted to have. It may be a small thing but it did cause some people to get Pixel envy or at least try to port it out to their own devices. Google eventually brought it to Pixel 3 and so those who have Pixel 2 phones were hoping that they too would eventually get it. It seems that Google has quietly brought the feature to its 2017 flagship.
Actually, some users were already able to port Live Caption to the Pixel 2 even before the Pixel 4 was officially unveiled by Google, according to Android Police. But of course, that wasn’t official and was just a workaround even if it was working just fine. But now, some users were posting on Reddit saying that they are able to see the Live Caption settings on both the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL after installing the latest Device Personalization Services APK.
Just why are people excited about Live Caption anyway? It’s an automatic captioning system for your videos and spoken audio, excluding phone and video calls. What makes this stand out though is that it happens in real-time and is also completely on-device. No need to do the computing on the cloud and your privacy is safer compared to other apps that offer the same service. Plus, it’s completely free and is built-in to your phone so those are always pluses.
Even if the Pixel 2 is almost three years old, it’s nice to see that Google is still including it in most of their updates and adding their newest software features as well. However, we don’t know how long that will last of course so while they’re still paying attention to it, better take advantage of it if you don’t want to upgrade your phone just yet.
If you don’t want to wait for the server-side rollout to your Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL, you can always activate Live Caption by downloading the Personalization Services from APKMirror. Let’s also wait and see if Google will eventually release this feature to other Android devices as well.