Twitter has announced that its video player will soon include a closed captioning button for Android and iOS users. The newly announced closed captions buttons appears on the top right corner of a video that has captions available for it. Users can simply tap the closed captions or CC button at the top right corner of the video in the app on Android or iOS to enable or disable this feature.
It is worth noting that enabling or disabling captions in videos on Twitter has been a slightly complicated process for the longest time. Whether or not you can enable (or disable) this feature on Twitter’s mobile app has been dependent on various factors, including if you have turned this feature on or off in Twitter app’s Accessibility setting or if you are watching the video with the sound on or off. While all the factors still hold influence over the feature, the micro-blogging platform is making it easier to enable or disable this feature in Twitter’s mobile app just as it is in case of its web-based platform.
It is worth noting that Twitter first started testing this feature back in April this year with a limited set of iPhone users. And now, the company is expanding its reach to all users on Android and iOS across the globe.
The choice is now yours: the closed caption toggle is now available for everyone on iOS and Android!
Tap the “CC” button on videos with available captions to turn the captions off/on. https://t.co/GceKv68wvi
— Support (@Support) June 23, 2022
There is one caveat though. Twitter’s newly launched closed captions feature won’t work if the video doesn’t include captions natively. This means that Twitter will show captions only if they are included in the video. And if they are not, you are out of luck. Also, this feature will not work if you have turned the sound on in your video.
Interestingly, last year, Twitter rolled out automatic captions for videos on its platform. However, the new feature that the company introduced today is independent of it. In a statement to The Verge, the company explained that the button “will only show up on videos with captions already available, and is not related to the automated caption system.”