Live Transcription enables automatic speech to text transcription in Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars. Activating this feature is a two-step process.
First, this feature must be enabled in the host’s account settings. Then, the host needs to turn on live transcription once a meeting starts. Attendees can then choose whether or not to display the captions. Note that if the host does not attend the meeting, they should assign another attendee as an alternative host when setting up the meeting, so that they can turn on the feature. Here are the steps in detail:
Step One: The Host Enables Live Transcription in Zoom account settings
The Live Transcription function only needs to be enabled in the meeting host’s Zoom account meeting settings once. After this is done, live transcription will be available during the host’s meetings permanently. Note: Your administrator has enabled and locked this for all accounts so you should not need to perform this step. These instructions are here as an FYI in case this feature is not enabled on your account for some reason.
- Navigate to zoom.us and select Sign in
- Sign in with your email and password
- On the left sidebar, choose Settings, then click In Meeting (Advanced)
- Locate the Closed Captioning heading (an easy way is to CTRL-F and search for ‘caption’)
- Turn on the blue toggle switch to the right (shown below)
- Check the box for Enable live transcription service to show transcript on the side panel in-meeting
Step Two: The Host Turns on Live Transcription during the meeting
Note: Live Transcription must be enabled by the host during each meeting.
- Begin your meeting
- At the bottom of the screen, select Live Transcript. If you don’t see it, you might need to resize your window to be wider.
- Click Enable Auto-Transcription. This button will turn blue, indicating that live transcription has begun
- You will now see live transcription appear along the bottom of the screen. An example of what this looks like is below
Once this is done, attendees can turn the captions on or off. You can also adjust the size of the transcription text by clicking the arrow on the ‘Live Transcript’ icon.
Note: If the host does not attend the meeting, they should assign an alternative host who can perform step two to enable captions on the meeting.