Zoom Closed Captioning

Zoom recently announced the ability to automatically add Closed Captioning to Zoom meetings.  When turned on, Zoom will automatically convert what is being said into text.

It’s important to understand, that as of June 2021, it is still in development and has issues.  But it’s pretty good!  I guess we’ll see how it handles various “technical” terms we might use.

A few points:

  • The host must activate the feature.  We plan on doing so for our monthly meetings.
  • You will need to activate the feature on your computer.
  • You will be able to control the size of the text that is displayed on your computer.

Activating Closed Captioning

Once you have jointed the Zoom meeting, look for the CC-Live Transcript button on the Zoom toolbar:

If you can’t see the CC-Live Transcript button, the meeting host may not have turned on the Closed Captioning feature.  Use the Chat function to let the host know, or raise your hand, but somehow let them know.

It’s also possible that Zoom doesn’t have enough room to display all the buttons in the toolbar, and you will need to click on More to find the CC-Live Transcript functions:

Once you click on the CC-Live Transcript or More button, you will see a small menu, something like this:

Click on the Show Subtitle option, and the text should begin displaying on the bottom of your Zoom window.

Adjusting Caption Size

You may have noticed that the small menu shown above also has an option for Subtitle Settings.  The best part of this is that it allows you to adjust the size of the text that is displayed.

As shown below, you can go from small to large, and anywhere in-between.