Google Meet gets more live caption languages, a redesigned Nest Hub Max experience, and more

After Zoom announced that they were going to allow their software to run on Nest Hub Max, they also dropped news of extending their 24-hour calls through March of 2021. Now, Google is rivaling that with its own extension on unlimited 24-hour calls in the free version of Google Meet through March 31, 2021, for all Gmail accounts to help users connect with loved ones through the holiday season.

In addition, they will be rolling out live caption support for four new languages – French, German, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain and Latin America). Live captions in Google Meet use speech-to-text technology to provide on-screen transcriptions of a call participant’s speech for those who may be deaf or hard of hearing so that they can better follow along with the conversation. Live captions already exist in English, but these four new languages will make Meet much more useful to a wider array of users.

Lastly, Google Meet has been available on the Nest Hub Max since late June of this year, but it hasn’t really received many updates since its launch. However, in order to improve the experience and make better use of its large screen, Google is adding several improvements to the Meet experience on the device.

Now, when you start a Meet call on your Nest Hub Max, you’ll see an in-call clock on the top left of the screen once you tap, all users will have nameplates so that you can easily see who is in the call and you can tap to pin an individual’s video feed to keep them in focus if needed. To unpin their video, just double-tap it. You also have the ability to view four call participants at once with a new 2×2 grid and an overflow menu lets you see those who won’t fit on the screen.

All of these updates are automatically implemented and you should have them immediately. There is no action needed on behalf of the Admin or their end-users, provided that they have already connected their Workspace account to their Nest Hub Max. If not, users can do so before benefiting from these new features!

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