Live captions in Hangouts Meet, now available on Android
What’s changing
Support for live captions on Hangouts Meet was announced at Google Cloud Next ‘19 in San Francisco. Google is continuing to invest in this area with the addition of captions support on the Meet Android app.
Additionally, you can now more easily turn on live captions on web and in rooms with a button that’s one click away.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
Live captions help make your meetings more accessible by reducing barriers to holding meetings between users of different hearing abilities, regardless of whether they are participating remotely or in person.
How to get started
- Admins: No action required.
- End users:
- On Android: Tap the closed captions button on the top right of the Meet app when you are in a meeting. (Note that this button is only shown here for English language users. It can be found in the triple-dot menu for all other languages.
- On the web and on Chromebase for meetings touchscreen devices: Tap the captions button at the bottom right of your screen. (Note that this button is only shown here for English language users. It can be found in the triple-dot menu for all other languages.)
- On devices with a Mimo touchscreen: Tap the captions option in the right-hand panel. (Note that this is only shown here for English language users. It can be found under Settings for all other languages.)
Additional details
Live captions are not yet available on the Meet iOS app but Gooare working on making it available soon.
When you turn on captions, they will be visible on that particular device. In order for other participants in the meeting to see captions, they’ll have to turn it on for their devices as well.
Currently, live captions is only available in English. Additionally, captions will not appear in a recording of a meeting.
Helpful links
Availability
Rollout details
- Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 16, 2019
- Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on September 16, 2019
G Suite editions
- Available to all G Suite editions
On/off by default?
- This feature will be ON by default.
