Google Slides gets automatic real-time captions

Google has added a new feature to Slides that show automated closed captions in real-time when presenting. 

This feature uses your computer’s microphone to detect your spoken presentation and then transcribes what you say as captions on the slides you’re presenting. This helps make your presentations more effective in more environments to a wider audience.

If you turn captions on, Google Slides will use the audio from your microphone to automatically create captions of what you say. These captions will display in real time at the bottom of your screen to all audience members watching the presentation. This will work for local presentations and for presentations over video conferencing software, where captions will show on the shared screen.

The feature works in US English on Chrome browsers. Captions are created from the presenter’s computer and its microphone, so captions may not work consistently if there are multiple presenters using different computers. Do note that the captions are from Google Slides, not the video conferencing software, and only the speaker’s voice is captioned.

This feature can help make your presentation more effective for audience members who are deaf or hard of hearing, non-native speakers or audience members who prefer written content and in venues with poor audio or in noisy ambient environments.