Meet adds customizable pre-meeting note templates with structured sections

Google Meet’s AI note-taker just got more opinionated — in a useful way. Instead of dumping a generic meeting recap into a Google Doc, Meet now lets people choose the structure of those notes while the call is happening. That sounds small, but it fixes one of the big annoyances with AI meeting summaries: they often tell you what was said, not what got decided. ### What changed in Meet? Google rolled out new controls for “Take notes for me” on April 30, 2026. Inside a meeting, users can now toggle specific note sections on or off from the in-call menu. The available sections are Summary, Decisions, Next steps, and Details. Google also tightened up the summary itself so it’s shorter and easier to scan after the call ends. (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com) ### Why is the Decisions section the real story? Because “decision” is the thing teams lose most often. A recap can capture discussion, but a decision log tells you what the room actually landed on. Meet’s new Decisions section explicitly records outcomes and tags their status as Aligned, Needs further discussion, Di(workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)that Decisions section launches in English only. (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com) ### Can you set this up before the meeting? Sort of — but not as a permanent custom template in the way some people might imagine. Google’s own wording is about section customization and optional settings, not user-built reusable templates with arbitrary fields. You can turn note-taking on from Calendar, the Meet gre(workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)tion toggles Google announced this week apply to the current meeting and do not change your default layout for future calls. (support.google.com) ### So is the “template” framing a little overstated? Basically, yes. This is more like structured note controls than full template authoring. You’re not designing a custom schema with your own headings like “goals” or “risks.” You’re choosing from Google’s built-in sections and deciding which ones matter for that meeting. That still matters a lot, but it’s a narrower feature than “build your own pre-meeting template” suggests. (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com) ### Why is Google doing this now? Because Meet has been moving in this direction all year. In January, Google added a toggle so hosts could have “Take notes for me” start automatically for meetings they host. In February, it added green-room controls and clearer visibility so participants could see whether note-taking was enabled before joining. This new update is the next step — less about whether notes exist, more about what shape they take. (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com) ### Who actually gets it? It’s available to users who already have access to “Take notes for me.” Google lists Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, Frontline Plus, Google AI Pro for Education, plus consumer Google AI Pro and Ultra for this specific update. Rollout started April 30, 2026, for both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains, with gradual visibility over as long as 15 days. (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com) ### What’s the practical payoff? The win is less reformatting after the meeting. If the AI separates summary, decisions, and next steps cleanly, the doc is immediately more usable for follow-ups, project tracking, and “wait, what did we agree to?” moments. It won’t magically make meetings better. But it does push Meet’s notes closer to an action document instead of a fuzzy recap. (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com) ### Bottom line Google didn’t turn Meet into a fully customizable meeting-template system. But it did give its AI note-taker a more structured spine — and that’s probably the part most teams actually need.