Otter.ai offers Spanish and French transcription

Image: Otter.ai

Otter.ai adds more languages to its artificial intelligence-powered transcription and translation service. The app adds real-time transcription in Spanish and French on its desktop and mobile apps. The feature works for in-person and virtual meeting platforms, including Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.

You can also use Otter.ai's AI Chat feature to ask follow-up questions about the transcription in your preferred language. The downside is the company isn't offering translation at launch, so you must be a speaker of the language you're transcribing. The company said it plans to support more languages throughout 2025.

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Instagram now lets you add songs in posts to your Spotify account

Image: Instagram & Spotify

Music discovery is a big part of social media these days. Instagram might be slightly late to the party, but at least, now you can add the songs you hear from posts and Reels straight to your Spotify playlist. If you like a song in a post, tap on the title to go to the audio preview page. You'll know you have the feature if you spot that Add button with the Spotify logo beside the audio scrubber. You will need to link your Spotify account with your Instagram first. But once that is set up, it'll be a one-tap process to add songs to your Liked Songs playlist.

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Spotify Offline Backup lets Premium users listen to songs offline even without downloads

Image: Spotify

If you're a Spotify Premium user and forgot to download your favourite playlist or you're looking to save on data or phone storage, Spotify is giving you the option to listen offline sans downloads with the new Offline Backup feature. It takes your recently streamed and queued tracks and compiles these songs into a playlist. It includes tracks stored on your device as part of your regular listening sessions (a.k.a. cache).

Spotify lets you filter and sort songs if you're looking for a "certain vibe." You can arrange it by artist, mood, and genre. Like its other playlists, Offline Backup evolves as you listen, so there's always something new there.

Offline Backup will appear automatically in the Home feed when you're offline. You just need to listen to more than five songs recently and have offline listening enabled. You can find this feature under Settings > Data Saving and Offline > Offline Listening / Offline Access. You can add this playlist to Your Library for easier access.

Offline Backup is rolling out globally, so you should have it once you've updated your app to the latest version. It comes to Android and iOS, including Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

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Google tests Gemini Live support on Android Auto

Photo: Google

Google looks like it's working on some Android Auto features. One of them brings Gemini Live to cars and another adds support for "local media." A look at Android Auto's code shows a new string directly referencing a codename associated with Gemini and the ability to "start conversation." But it doesn't look like it's live yet. There are also added assets like "star" used for Gemini spotted in this version of Android Auto.

9to5Google reports Google is working on supporting car radio control through Android Auto. There are clues that it will support adding and removing "Favorite" stations through an app on Android Auto. And there are hints it will support "local media" from your car, too. There are also new icons for local media playback and radio but these haven't gone live yet. We have no idea if and when Google will roll out these features. But we're keeping our eye on it.

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