How to use live subtitles during a video consultation ?

Created by Thibault Breboin, Modified on Tue, 28 Jul at 7:34 AM by Thibault Breboin

Colib video consultations can display what each participant says as real-time subtitles. Speech recognition runs entirely on your device: your voice is never sent to a server, and subtitles are displayed only — they are never recorded or saved.

How it works

- When you turn subtitles on, your speech is transcribed on your own computer and shown as text to the other participants (and to yourself, so you can check it is working).
- Subtitles appear in a dark banner just above the control bar and disappear a few seconds after you stop speaking.
- Each participant's speech is recognized in the language of their Colib interface (English or French). Both languages can be used in the same consultation.

Requirements

- To generate subtitles from your speech: a recent desktop version of Google Chrome (version 139 or later). This is currently the only browser able to guarantee on-device speech recognition. (It will work on Microsoft Edge soon).
- To see other participants' subtitles: any browser or device — including phones and tablets. For example, a patient joining from an iPhone will see the subtitles of a practitioner using Chrome.

Turning subtitles on

1. During the video consultation, click the Settings (gear) icon in the bottom control bar.
2. Open the Subtitles section.
3. Check "Show my speech as subtitles to the other participants".
4. The first time you enable it, your browser may download the speech recognition files. This takes a few moments; the subtitles start automatically once the download is complete.

Your choice is remembered for your next consultations on the same computer. To stop, uncheck the box at any time.

Good to know

- When your microphone is muted, nothing is transcribed or shown.
- If the Subtitles section says the feature is not available on your browser, you are likely not using Google Chrome, or your version is out of date. Update Chrome (Menu > Help > About Google Chrome) and rejoin the consultation.
- Automatic speech recognition is never perfect: names, technical terms or fast speech may be transcribed imperfectly. Subtitles are an aid to understanding, not an official transcript.