Google Drive Adding Video Transcripts With Search

After introducing auto-generated captions last year, Google Drive is now adding video transcripts on the web.

Tap the settings gear icon in the redesigned Material 3 player for a new “Transcript” button. This will open a side panel that shows time-stamped captions with the ability to jump directly to a section by clicking. There’s also a “Search transcript” field on top.

As the uploaded video is playing, the panel “highlights the currently spoken text.”

This transcript capability will “improve the accessibility of media stored in Drive and enables you to easily search and navigate to key moments within your video.”

Other aspects to note:

Your video must have captions to access this feature. A video with captions will have the CC button in the bottom right corner of the video player set to active (not grayed out).
You can add captions to a video by right-clicking the video in Drive > selecting Manage caption tracks > generate automatic captions. You can also generate captions when the video is playing by going to the three dot menu on top right > manage captions tracks > generate automatic captions.
Users with personal Google accounts can upload or request automatic captions after uploading a video to Drive.

Google Drive video transcripts are rolling out over the coming weeks for “all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.”