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Google Meet captions are not available, or not in your language

Meet's captions are the most generous of the big three: on every account, free, and not gated behind the host. When they fail, it is usually the language, the browser, or the tab you are not looking at. Find your symptom.

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Which symptom is yours?

Four, in the order people hit them. Meet leaves less to the host than Zoom or Teams do, so more of these you can fix yourself.

There is no captions button

Meet's captions are a per-participant control: you turn them on for yourself, from the toolbar or with the keyboard, and nobody has to allow it. So when the control is missing, it is rarely the meeting and almost always the browser. Meet supports the current versions of the major browsers and quietly drops features in older ones or in browsers it does not fully support; the same goes for an out-of-date Meet app on a phone or tablet.

Update the browser, or open the meeting in Chrome, and the control comes back. If it still does not, the account hosting the meeting may have Meet features restricted by its admin, and that is a conversation with them rather than a setting you can reach.

The captions are in the wrong language

Meet captions in a good number of languages, but it does not listen first and decide. The language is chosen in the caption settings, and until somebody changes it, every meeting is captioned in the same one, whatever is being spoken. A bilingual call, or a call in a language the setting does not cover, comes out as nonsense or as nothing.

Changing the setting fixes a call in one language. For a call that changes language, or a language Meet does not caption, the captions have to come from somewhere that detects it: Subtitles captions the Meet tab from your Mac, works out which of sixteen languages it is hearing, and since 1.3 can translate live into yours.

Translated captions are greyed out

Translation is the one Meet caption feature that is gated. It depends on the Workspace edition of the account that created the meeting, not on yours, so a personal account joining a company meeting may see it, and the same person hosting from a free account will not. There is nothing to switch on your side.

On-device translation does not have an edition. Subtitles translates between any two of its sixteen languages on the Mac, on any Meet call, including the ones from a free account, and the audio never leaves the machine to do it.

They vanish when you switch to another tab

Meet draws its captions in the meeting tab, under the video. Switch to the document you are taking notes in, or to anything else, and the captions are still running in a tab you cannot see. On a laptop screen, where the meeting and the notes cannot both be visible, that is most of the call.

An overlay solves that by ignoring which window is in front. Subtitles draws its captions above everything and lets clicks through, so the Meet tab can sit behind your notes and you still read the call. The demo on the home page is that exact switch.

When none of this is the problem

Captions that are on, in the right language, and still empty are an audio problem, not a caption one. Meet captions what it receives, so a muted or failing microphone on the other end, or a connection losing packets, gives it nothing. Ask the person to check their microphone before you touch anything else. And captions are not kept: a Meet recording only carries a transcript when the account has that feature, which is again the host's edition and not your setting.

Questions people ask next

Are Google Meet captions free?
Yes, on every account, and any participant can turn them on for themselves. Translated captions are the exception: they depend on the Workspace edition of the account hosting the meeting.
How do I turn on captions in Google Meet?
From the toolbar at the bottom of the meeting, or press c while the meeting has focus. If neither works, the browser is the usual reason: update it or open the meeting in Chrome.
Why are the captions in the wrong language?
Meet does not detect the spoken language. It captions in the language chosen in its caption settings, so change that for a single-language call, or use captions that detect the language for a call that switches.
Does Subtitles work with Google Meet?
Yes. It captions the audio the Meet tab is playing, in any browser, without joining the meeting and without any setting on Google's side. The Google Meet page has the detail.
Can I read the captions while I take notes in another window?
Not Meet's own, which stay in the tab. Subtitles draws its captions above every window and lets clicks through, so the notes are in front and the call is still readable.

The same overlay, elsewhere

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Set-up guide

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Deaf and hard of hearing

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Every alternative, compared

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14-day refund, no questions asked

Buy for $9

One-time $9, every future update included · macOS 14.2 or later · Apple silicon
Unlimited live captions, for as long as you own the Mac. No minutes to buy, no account, no subscription.