Live Transcription in Zoom, Teams and Google Meet: 2026 Guide

All three apps transcribe live. In Zoom, click Show captions, then View full transcript. In Microsoft Teams, go to More actions > Transcribe. In Google Meet, press c for live captions; on an eligible Workspace plan, Meeting tools > Transcribe saves a transcript you get after the call. Captions are for the moment; a transcript is the version you can keep.

The words you need usually come at the worst moment: a budget figure said too fast, a name you didn't catch, a deadline someone mentions while you're still typing the last one. Live text on screen helps you catch it in the moment, and a saved transcript lets you check it later. Below: how to turn on both in each app, which plans include what, where the file lands afterward, and why the button sometimes isn't there.

Live captions vs. a meeting transcript: which one you need

Live captions show speech as text during the call and are gone afterward; a transcript is saved as a file you can search and share. Every app on this list treats them as two separate features, and mixing them up is how people end a meeting with nothing written down.

• Live captions are for following along. In Google Meet they're turned on only for you, and Microsoft says plainly that Teams doesn't save captions.
• A transcript is the record. It carries speaker names and time stamps, it's stored after the meeting, and in Teams and Google Meet everyone on the call is told it's running.

My test is simple: if I only need to understand the call, captions are enough. If anyone will ask "what exactly did we agree?" next week, I start the transcript in the first minute, before anything worth keeping gets said.

How to turn on live transcription in Zoom

In a Zoom meeting, click Show captions in the toolbar and text appears as people speak. According to Zoom's free plan page, automated captions are included with the free Basic plan, so you don't need to pay for this part.

Show live captions in a Zoom meeting

1. Start or join the meeting in the Zoom desktop or mobile app.
2. Click Show captions in the meeting controls toolbar.
3. To read back, click the up arrow next to Show captions and, under Captions and translation, choose View full transcript. The Transcript panel opens, and you can search it.
4. If the speaker's language isn't English, set your speaking language from the same menu. Zoom notes that captions are inaccurate when the language doesn't match.

By default any participant can turn captions on. If the host switched on Allow only the following users to enable captions for the meeting, you'll see a request option instead, and the host clicks Enable or Decline. Captions also won't run in a meeting that has a manual captioner assigned.

Keep a Zoom transcript after the meeting

Zoom changed this in 2026. Its saving captions page says that starting May 18, 2026, users can no longer save or download closed captions; captions stay available during the meeting with up to 3 minutes of scroll back. Zoom's captions help page still shows a Save transcript button in the panel, but don't rely on it to keep anything. To keep the text, use one of these:

• Meeting transcript. On Pro, Business and Enterprise accounts, this setting is off by default. Turn it on under Settings > Meeting > In Meeting (Advanced) > Meeting transcript (admins do it in the Admin Center for everyone). Hosts can then download transcripts as a VTT file from the Recordings & Transcripts tab.
• Cloud recording transcript. If you record to the cloud on a Pro, Business, Education or Enterprise account with audio transcription enabled, Zoom produces a separate VTT transcript of the recording and emails you when it's ready. It's not live, but it's the most complete record.

Admins who can't find captions at all should check Account Settings > Meeting > In Meeting (Advanced) > Automated captions. Zoom says it's on by default for paid accounts, and a grayed-out toggle means someone higher up locked it.

How to turn on live transcription in Microsoft Teams

In a Teams meeting on desktop, open More actions and select Transcribe; the transcript appears in real time with each speaker's name and a time stamp. Microsoft's guide notes that live transcription is only available on Teams for desktop, while the mobile app shows the transcript after the meeting ends.

Start a live transcript in Teams

1. In the meeting controls, select More actions.
2. Select Transcribe.
3. Confirm the language everyone is speaking, then select Confirm. Everyone sees a notice that the meeting is being transcribed.
4. To hide or reopen the panel, go to More actions, select the arrow next to Transcribing, and choose Hide transcript or Show transcript.

Organizers, co-organizers and presenters can stop and restart transcription; attendees can't. Organizers can also limit it to "Organizers and co-organizers" or "No one" in the meeting options. People from another organization can read the transcript live but not afterward, and anyone who dialed in by phone can't see it.

Turn on live captions in Teams

For captions only, select More actions > Captions on desktop, or More options > Turn on live captions on mobile. To fix garbled text, hover over the captions, choose Open caption settings and set the Meeting spoken language. Captions are deleted when the meeting ends, so they're no substitute for a transcript.

Using Teams with a personal account? Microsoft's Teams personal guide puts captions under More actions > Language and speech > Show live captions.

Find and download a Teams transcript

After the meeting, the transcript sits in the meeting chat under the Recap tab and in the meeting's calendar event, stored in the organizer's OneDrive for Business. To download it, open the past meeting chat, select Recap > Transcript, and pick .docx or .vtt from the Download menu. By default only organizers and co-organizers can download.

At the start of a quarterly review in Teams, I started the transcript while people were still saying hello, then pasted the key lines from the Recap tab into my follow-up email that afternoon. Nobody argued about who owned what, because the sentence was right there with a name and a time stamp next to it.

How to turn on live transcription in Google Meet

For live text in Google Meet, hover over Captions and translation in the call controls and select Turn on captions, or press c. Captions are free and private: Google's help page says they're turned on only for you, so nobody else knows you're reading along.

Show live captions in Google Meet

1. Join the meeting at meet.google.com on your computer.
2. Hover over Captions and translation at the bottom and select Turn on captions. The keyboard shortcut is c.
3. To change the language, use the drop-down on the left of the caption tray.
4. Scroll up in the caption tray to reread something you missed.

On Android, tap the screen, tap More at the bottom right, then Show captions. Google's Android page lists English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Hindi among the languages every user can pick, with many more in beta.

During a Meet call with a client whose line kept breaking up, I turned on captions for myself rather than asking them to repeat the budget a third time. Nobody else saw the captions, which is exactly why it worked: the client never had to feel like the problem.

Start a Google Meet transcript

Google Meet transcripts are a paid Workspace feature that produces a saved document. Google lists Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Education Plus and Workspace Individual as eligible, in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, on a computer or Android device.

1. In the meeting, click Meeting tools.
2. Click Transcribe, then Start transcription.
3. Click Start in the pop-up. A Transcripts icon appears for everyone in the call.
4. To stop, click Meeting tools > Transcribing > Stop transcription, then Stop.

Afterward, the host, co-hosts and whoever started the transcript get an email with a link, and the document is attached to the Calendar event. The file itself lives in the organizer's Google Drive, in a Google Meet folder with a subfolder per meeting. Use captions if you need the words during the call; Google's page describes the transcript as something you get once the meeting is over.

To transcribe automatically, open Video call options > Meeting records when you create the event and select Transcribe the meeting. It starts once the host or a co-host joins on the web. For the recording itself, see how to record a Google Meet.

Why the transcribe button is missing

A missing button almost always comes down to your plan, your role in the meeting or an admin setting, not a bug. Check them roughly from most to least likely:

• You're not the host or a presenter. Teams attendees can't start transcription, and in Google Meet only the host and co-hosts can when Host management is on. Ask the organizer, or ask to be made a co-host or presenter.
• Your plan doesn't include it. Google Meet transcripts need one of the eligible Workspace editions, and Zoom's Meeting transcript needs Pro, Business or Enterprise. Captions still work in both.
• You're on the wrong device. Teams shows live transcription only on desktop, and Meet transcripts start from a computer or Android device, not an iPhone.
• Your admin turned it off. Zoom's caption and transcript toggles can be locked at the account level, and Google Workspace admins can switch off Meet transcripts under Apps > Google Workspace > Google Meet > Meet video settings in the Admin console. A grayed-out switch means "ask IT".
• Google Drive is full. Meet needs enough free Drive storage for both your organization and the host to save a transcript.

Should you use a third-party note taker instead?

A third-party note taker makes sense when your plan lacks transcripts, when you switch between Zoom, Teams and Meet in one week, or when you want a summary on top of the text. The trade-off is another account and, often, a bot in the participant list.

• Otter joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls and transcribes live. Otter's pricing page lists 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation on the free Basic plan, so an hour-long meeting gets cut off. Auto-join is set under Account Settings > Meetings, per Otter's own guide. Our Otter alternatives page covers what to do when those limits bite.
• Fathom transcribes every call in real time, and its integrations page covers the same three apps.

Whatever records the call, tell people. The built-in tools announce themselves; a bot shows up by name; a recorder on your own computer announces nothing, so the announcement has to come from you. For a side-by-side of the options, see our AI note-taking tools comparison.

Getting a more accurate live transcript

Live transcription is only as good as the audio it hears, and Zoom warns that automated captions may not be accurate. A few habits make a bigger difference than any setting:

1. Set the spoken language first. Zoom, Teams and Meet all transcribe badly when the language setting doesn't match the speaker.
2. Ask people to use a headset or earbuds on calls you'll need a record of. Laptop speakers bleeding into a laptop microphone make for messy transcripts.
3. One person talks at a time. Crosstalk is where names and numbers get scrambled.
4. Say the important things in full. "The deadline is Friday, November 13" survives transcription better than "so, the thirteenth?"
5. Check numbers against the source. A transcript is a good memory aid, not a contract. Before I forward a figure from a transcript, I check it against the deck or the email it came from.

When every word matters, for accessibility or a formal record, automated text isn't enough on its own. Zoom supports manual captions and third-party captioning services for exactly that, and a human captioner is worth booking for those meetings.