Live captions in Hangouts Meet

This announcement was made at Google Cloud Next ‘19 in San Francisco. Check out Next OnAir to tune into the livestream or watch session recordings following the event.


What’s changing

We’re making meetings more accessible for deaf and hard-of-hearing users by launching live captions in Hangouts Meet.

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 the web and on Chromebase for meetings touchscreen devices, navigate to the triple-dot menu at the bottom right corner of your screen and select the option to turn on captions.
    • On devices with a Mimo touchscreen and Chromebox for meetings with the remote, you can find the toggle to turn on captions in the Settings menu.

Additional details

Live captions is available across different Hangouts Meet-compatible platforms, such as on the web, devices with a Mimo touchscreen, Chromebox for meetings with the remote, and on Chromebase for meetings touchscreen devices.

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 April 10, 2019
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on April 10, 2019

G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
This feature will be ON by default.

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