Google Meet’s “Take notes for me” feature is a particularly useful implementation of AI. When you’re on a video call, Gemini can dictate what’s being said, offering summaries and highlights of the conversation. This way, your attention doesn’t have to be divided between the current conversation and writing notes to remember key points later: you can simply check the notes that are automatically generated as a Google Doc after the meeting is over. This is the kind of feature that sells me more on the whole “AI assistant” thing than the thing that makes me try to order a coffee.
Of course, video conferencing isn’t the only time when dictation can be useful. An in-person meeting can provide the same benefits as a virtual meeting: Why bother writing notes on paper or typing on a laptop when your phone can transcribe the chat on your behalf? For example, I’ve started using the Voice Memos app on my iPhone for this task, because it makes it easy to both record audio and automatically transcribe conversations. However, if you’re a regular Google Meet user, you now have a similar option in your app of choice: Meet’s Take Notes for Me feature now supports live, in-person meetings as well.
How “Take Notes for Me” works individually
As noted by 9to5GoogleHere’s how it works: You open the Google Meet site or app on your device, but instead of initiating a call, you can use the new “Take notes for me” option to have Gemini transcribe and summarize your discussion. You can press “Stop” at any time to stop dictation, and press “Stop” followed by “Stop taking notes” to end it completely. If you want to chat with someone who isn’t in the same room with you, you can also switch to a video call. And, like Google Meet calls, Take Notes for Me will automatically save meeting notes to a Google Doc.
The feature started out as an alpha-only option, but is now being rolled out to more Workspace plans. Your administrator may need to activate it on your behalf, but after that, you should be able to start recording your conversations.
What do you think so far?
Try Google Meet’s personal dictation option
This feature will not appear for any Google Account that is not linked to a Workspace plan. Of course, if you don’t have “Take notes for me” available in Google Meet, there are plenty of alternatives. It won’t be a perfect match, since 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 generate automatic transcriptions, which you can save to Apple Notes. But if you don’t have an Apple device or you prefer another option, PCMag has a series of recommendationsWhich includes Otter.ai, GoTranscript, and Rev.
