Google Meet Now Lets You Take Notes During in-Person Meetings.
Google Meet’s “Take Notes” feature is a particularly useful application of AI. During a video call, Gemini can dictate what’s said, offering summaries and highlights of the conversation. This way, you don’t have to distract yourself from discussing and taking notes to remember key points: you can simply review the notes, which are automatically created as a Google Docs document after the meeting ends. This is the feature that convinces me more of the promise of an “AI assistant” than something trying to order me a coffee .
Of course, dictation isn’t just useful for video conferences. In-person meetings can offer the same benefits as virtual ones: why waste time taking notes on paper or typing on a laptop when your phone can transcribe the chat for you? For example, I started using the Voice Memos app on my iPhone for this task because it easily records both audio and automatically transcribes the conversation. However, if you regularly use Google Meet, you now have a similar option in your favorite app: the “Take Notes” feature in Meet now supports in-person meetings.
How does the “Take My Notes” feature work in person?
As 9to5Google notes , it works like this: you open the Google Meet website or app on your device, but instead of starting a call, you can use the new “Take Notes for Me” feature to have Gemini transcribe and summarize your discussion. You can tap “Pause” at any time to pause dictation, and “Stop” and then “Stop Taking Notes” to end it entirely. You can also switch to a video call if you want to include someone who isn’t in the same room with you. And, just like a regular Google Meet call, “Take Notes for Me” will automatically save your meeting notes to a Google Docs document.
This feature was initially available only in the alpha version, but is now being rolled out to more and more Workspace plans. Your administrator may need to enable it on their end before you can start recording your own conversations.
Try an alternative to Google Meet’s dictation feature for in-person conversations.
This feature won’t be available for Google accounts not linked to a Workspace plan. Of course, there are plenty of alternatives if you don’t have the “Take Notes” feature in Google Meet. This won’t be ideal, as Google Meet integrates with your Google account and does more than just transcribe calls, but there are other options worth considering.
As I mentioned, I really like using Apple’s built-in tools: Voice Memos can create automatic transcripts that can be saved to Apple Notes. But if you don’t have an Apple device or prefer another option, PCMag offers a number of recommendations , including Otter.ai, GoTranscript, and Rev.