Google Translate is getting a major offline upgrade

Our phones are fantastic tools for helping us deal with unfamiliar situations, but all too often that requires having an active data connection — which can be far from a certainty, depending on where we’re going. That’s exactly why it’s so important to have offline options for some of those most critical tools, like offline support in Google Maps. Earlier this year we spotted Google working towards another new offline mode, as it prepared support for Live Translate without a data connection. And now we’re finally starting to see it arrive.

When we last took a peek at Googles in-development efforts back in May, it appeared that we could expect offline Live Translate support for at least English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish.

Now that it’s rolling out, we can see that list has expanded to also include Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, and Swedish.

We can also now see that Google has updated its support docs to confirm Live Translate will work offline on Pixel 9, Pixel 10, and Pixel 11 devices.

Being able to break down language barriers was already a major superpower for Google Translate, and this offline support for its Live mode is only making a great thing even better. It’s a bit of a bummer that we’re not seeing support for older Pixel phones, or those from other manufacturers, but also not entirely unexpected.

You should also keep in mind that offline Live Translate is only supported between each of those languages and English, and not directly between any other two. It would be lovely it we see that change one day, but for the moment, we’re not holding our breath.