Captions everyone can follow
Turn on live captions and every speaker’s words appear on screen, labelled with their name. Each person picks their own caption language — and in Chrome on desktop, captions can be translated right on your device.
Live captions with speaker names
The host turns captions on for the meeting. Each participant’s own browser transcribes their own voice while they are unmuted, and the text appears for everyone with their name.
- Real-time captions labelled by speaker
- English (US, India, UK), Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Urdu, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese
- A muted participant produces no captions
- Works in Chrome, Edge and Safari (Firefox has no speech recognition)
Read captions in your language
When the host enables live translation, each viewer can choose a language and read the captions translated — the translation runs on your own computer, so the text isn’t sent anywhere.
- Translate captions into 14 languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada
- Runs on your device using the browser’s built-in translator
- Needs Chrome 138 or newer on a desktop or laptop
- Each viewer chooses independently
Captions become the transcript
Everything captioned is kept in the meeting report as a speaker-labelled transcript, and feeds the automatic summary.
- Transcript saved in the meeting report
- Summary with key points, decisions and action items
- Only the meeting owner and hosts can open it
- Great for minutes, classes and accessibility
Include everyone
Live captions
On-screen captions with the speaker’s name.
19 languages
Including 10 Indian languages.
Your language
Each person picks their own caption and translation language.
On-device translation
Caption translation runs locally in Chrome on desktop.
Education
Help students follow along and keep a transcript of the class.
Public meetings
Town halls and consultations that more people can follow.
Questions, answered
Which browsers support captions?
Chrome, Edge and Safari. Firefox doesn’t support speech recognition, so captions can’t be produced there (you can still read other people’s captions).
Where is speech converted to text?
In each speaker’s own browser, using the browser’s speech recognition. Note that Chrome’s speech recognition is an online service run by Google; the meeting shows a notice when captions are turned on.
Which devices support translation?
Caption translation uses the browser’s built-in on-device translator, available in Chrome 138 or newer on desktop. On other browsers you see the original captions.
Who can turn captions on?
The host or a co-host, from the More menu. Translation must also be enabled in Host Tools.