Following along with those TikTok cooking videos or other content might get a little easier with the short-form video platform’s newest features.
On Thursday, TikTok announced via a blog post that it would begin the rollout of three new accessibility and translation features for its wildly popular videos. These new features include auto-generated captions, translations for video descriptions and captions, and even translations for those text stickers people add to their TikTok videos.
With the auto-generated captions feature, TikTok users will be able to enable closed captions for the videos they watch, as well as the ones they create.
In addition to auto-captions, TikTok will also be rolling out two new translation features, one for video captions and descriptions and another for those handy text stickers that creators will often add to their videos to provide more context.
According to TikTok’s announcement, these new accessibility features are expected to “support an initial batch of languages including English, Portuguese, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, and Turkish.”
While TikTok is announcing the above features today, they’re not necessarily widely available to all users just yet. TikTok says that the rollout is still “at the early stages” and for now, they’re only “available on select videos at this time.”
Accessibility is increasingly gaining importance in the world of social media. And TikTok isn’t the only platform that’s beefing up its accessibility tools. In fact, Twitter recently announced the launch of at least two other accessibility features for the bird app: alt text reminders and a closed captioning toggle for Android and iOS.
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
I have lost count of how many times I have gone to bed thinking I will finally sleep on time, only to somehow end up scrolling Instagram or X again. A few minutes turn into an hour, then another, and before I notice, it is 2 or 3 a.m. The next morning, I am usually annoyed with myself because I could have just slept and felt considerably better for the day ahead.
It is also a surprisingly hard habit to beat. Knowing you should put the phone down does not always help once it is already in your hand. Brick Night is a new gadget built around that exact problem. Instead of relying on you to remember to turn on an app blocker, it automatically restricts selected apps and websites when your phone enters your chosen sleep space during the hours you set.