Clubhouse adds real-time closed captioning on iOS

Clubhouse may have popularized the live audio format, but in many ways, it’s been forced to play catchup with its competitors. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the feature front, where it’s missing functionality found in other apps. However, this week the company filed a significant gap by adding support for live captioning on iOS. That’s a feature Twitter Spaces already had on offer, and it’s one that will make the app accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

In a statement to TechCrunch, the company said the feature supports 13 languages at launch, including English, Cantonese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and Russian. However, as the outlet also points out, some users have found that the feature sometimes doesn’t recognize a language properly, leading to incomprehensible captions. There’s also no word yet on when Clubhouse will make closed captioning available on Android.

To its credit, Clubhouse has added a lot of handy features in recent weeks. One of the more notable additions was Wave, a tool you can use to invite friends to a private audio room quickly. It also recently made it possible to share 30-second previews of public rooms. Those are all essential additions as the company attempts to stave off Twitter and Facebook.