Google adds live captioning to Slides and Hangouts Meet

For almost 10 years, Google has integrated speech recognition technologies into its G Suite apps, including voice typing in Google Docs, voice searching in Google, and machine-generated captions in YouTube.

Google recently added one-click live captioning to Google Slides and Google Hangouts Meet. When enabled, captions are displayed in real time across the bottom of each app’s screen. Not only does live captioning extend access to presentations and meetings for participants with hearing loss, but it is also beneficial for soft-spoken presenters or noisy environments.

At this time, captions are:

  • Only available in English.
  • Not saved or available for download during or after use.
  • Limited to the Chrome browser.

Google Slides

To enable captions in Google Slides, click “Captions” (CC symbol) along the bottom toolbar. If the bottom toolbar is not visible, move your mouse along the bottom left of the screen.

Captions are not available for presentations that have been published to the web.

For more information, see Present slides with captions.

Google Hangouts Meet

To enable captions in Google Hangouts Meet, click on the three dots menu in the lower right corner and choose “Turn on captions” next to the CC symbol.

Captions are enabled or disabled by each user and cannot be activated for other participants.

For more information, see Use captions in a video meeting

For additional information on other G Suite announcements, check out the latest edition of What’s New In G Suite.