Google Meet is getting fun video backgrounds and a ton of other useful upgrades

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google has today announced a host of useful changes coming to its Meet video conferencing platform. The first one – and the one I am most excited about – is the ability to add motion backgrounds. Google Meet already allows you to change the background, or blur it for some privacy.

The new video backgrounds – which arrive in the coming weeks – will add some fun elements to your video calls. For now, there are only three motion backgrounds – a classroom, a forest, and a party mode with colorful dancing sausages – but more will be added down the road. Google says that these video backgrounds will be available on both mobile and desktop clients of Meet.

In addition to video backgrounds, Google Meet is also getting the following upgrades very soon:

  • The tile view in Google Meet is getting upgraded. Users will be able to pin multiple tiles, highlight a speaker and presentation video at once, or multiple speakers simultaneously. This will come in handy, especially when a speaker is presenting his screen and also wants to be seen in action prominently while speaking.
  • Users can hide their own video feed to see more people. Plus, there will also be an option to resize or position the tile.
  • A Data Saver mode is coming to Google Meet, allowing users to save on precious mobile data while they are having a meeting using cellular data.
  • Google Meet will automatically enhance the brightness and exposure level using AI if you’re sitting against a bright backdrop such as open windows on a sunny day. In the coming weeks, users will be able to access these light adjustment controls to make themselves more visible during video calls.
  • An AI-driven feature called Autozoom is also in the pipeline, which automatically zooms in and positions you in the center of the frame. However, it will only be available to users on the paid tier of Workspace in the coming months.

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Google Meet is getting new tricks to ease the chaos of online classes for teachers

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google is bringing a host of new features to its Google Meet video calling platform that will make things a tad easier for teachers, and to some extent, for students too. To start, teachers will soon be able to end a meeting for all participants, ensuring that no one – even those in the breakout room – stay once their teacher leaves the online class. Additionally, teachers will also be able to create breakout rooms in advance before a class begins, saving them the hassle of creating one in the middle of a lecture.

Teachers will soon get a transcript of their Google Meet classes

And within the next few weeks, Google Meet will also add a new feature that will allow educators to mute all participants at once. And soon, they will also be able to control when students can unmute themselves, ensuring an interruption-free teaching session.

READ MORE: Google Meet gets a ‘green room’ to help ensure your mic is on and you look rad

Later this year, Google Meet will also send a transcript of each meeting to teachers, allowing them to share it with students who couldn’t attend a class. These transcripts can be edited too, and will help educators keep a record of what was taught in previous classes.

The ability to control who can attend meetings or share screen is coming to mobile devices too

Additionally, some of the new Google Meet tricks such as the ability to control who can attend meetings or share their screen will also be making their way to the Android and iOS apps. Moreover, more granular admin controls will also be rolling out in the coming months, allowing them to control who can join virtual meetings and if students from their school can join an online meeting from another school.

And with Classroom integration, a Google Meet session will only begin when the teacher arrives, and only those who are registered members of a classroom will be able to join it. And if there are multiple teachers in a Classroom, all of them will be serving as a host by default.

Emoji reactions for students will also be introduced later this year. However, teachers will be able to control when students can use them during an online class. The search giant is also making some behind-the-scene optimizations to ensure that a Google Meet class goes smoothly even if the internet connection is patchy or lacking bandwidth.

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Google Meet gets a ‘green room’ to help ensure your mic is on and you look rad

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google Meet has been the go-to platform here at Pocketnow for weekly meetings where we talk about work (of course) and eating an unhealthy amount of pizza. However, I’ve often found myself joining a call with my mic accidentally turned off or realizing too late that the lighting is bad. If you can relate to my weekly online conference fiasco, Google Meet now has a solution – a virtual ‘green room’ to make sure you’re meeting-ready before you actually hop in.

Fix your mic, speaker, webcam, camera angle, and your hair before you join a meeting

“You can use this new functionality to confirm that peripheral devices are properly configured and corrected, to check that your network connectivity is good, and to understand the impact of noise cancellation on your audio,” says Google. And in case a problem is detected, a warning or tip will appear to help users troubleshoot the issue. The new Google Meet feature has already started rolling out and might take up to 15 days to appear for the target user base. (More on the ‘target user base’ below!)

READ MORE: Google Meet won’t limit the duration of your calls to 60 minutes until March next year

Before joining a Google Meet conference call, users will now see a ‘Check your audio and video’ button below the camera feed. Tapping on it will open a virtual ‘green room’ where you can see a preview of how you’ll look in the meeting, change the preferred mic and speaker settings (if necessary), and adjust the camera preference if you have a discrete webcam attached to your PC and don’t want the in-built webcam to make you look like a blurry and grainy mess. God knows why we pay a thousand dollars on a laptop, only to be disappointed by their terrible webcams!

Unfortunately, you gotta be a Workspace customer to access the green room tool

Google says the new ‘green room’ feature in Google Meet will help users find issues such as an unintentionally muted mic, a secondary screen with a missing speaker, background noise, and poor lighting to name a few. However, the new Google Meet will only be available to the following paid tiers of Google Workspace (erstwhile G Suite) customers: 

Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits.

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Google begins slow death of Hangouts as group video calls now switch to Meet

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google kickstarted the slow death of the Hangouts brand a while ago, and earlier this year in April, the company officially cast the ominous shadow of oblivion on it by bringing Google Meet to the forefront. This was also accompanied by Hangouts Chat being (re)christened to Google Chat. Now, the company has started to slowly cut down the key features of Hangouts in order to migrate users to its new products. The latest one is disabling group video calls on Hangouts.

The latest version of Hangouts on both Android and iOS now shows a warning message at the top of the app’s homepage (image above) that video calls in Hangouts now rely on Google Meet. And to further sway users, the message adds that with Google Meet now in the picture, they can now take advantage of some nifty tools such as screen sharing and live captions among others.

Google Meet new UI
The new UI of 1-on-1 video calls in Hangouts

The latest version of the Hangouts app handles 1-on-1 video calls and group video calls in different manners. Now, when you open a chat with a contact and tap the video call icon in the top right corner, you’ll be greeted with three options – start a video call over Google Meet (this is a new option), start a video call using Hangouts, and make an audio call over Hangouts.

Group video calls in Hangouts now default to Google Meet.

But when you open a group conversation and tap on the video call icon, it automatically creates a Google Meet video call link and pastes it into the text field. All you have to do is hit the send button to share it with your contacts in that group. Now, to start the actual video call, you can choose between the Google Meet or Gmail apps, if you both on your phone. However, if you don’t have the Google Meet app installed on your phone, the group video call will be made via Gmail, even you’ve disabled the new ‘Meet’ tab at the bottom in the Gmail app. 

Source: Google Support

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Google Meet won’t limit the duration of your calls to 60 minutes until March next year

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google Meet went free for all users back in April, riding on an exponential growth triggered by a surge in remote working and online learning due to the coronavirus crisis. However, Google originally planned to offer an unlimited meeting duration (technically, the upper limit was 24 hours for each meeting) facility only until September 30, after which the maximum length of a meeting will be reduced to 60 minutes. However, it appears that the folks over at Google had a change of heart. The company has today announced that it won’t limit meetings to a 60-minute duration until March next year for users on the free tier. So, users still have another six months to enjoy (or suffer) online meetings on Google Meet that can last as long as 24 hours.

“As we look ahead to a holiday season with less travel and important milestones like family reunions, PTA meetings and weddings hosted over video, we want to continue helping those who rely on Meet to stay in touch over the coming months. As a sign of our commitment, today we’re continuing unlimited Meet calls (up to 24 hours) in the free version through March 31, 2021 for Gmail accounts,” Google Product Manager (Google Meet), Samir Pradhan, wrote in a blog post. 

Those who are on the free tier of Google Meet can conduct meeting with up to 100 people, while the individual paid tier and G Suite Enterprise versions increase the number of participants to 150 and 250 respectively. You can check out the differences between the free, individual paid plan ($8/month) and G Suite Enterprise plans here. 

A couple of days ago, Google also announced that the Google Meet app for Android and iOS has finally received the noise cancellation feature that was rolled out for the web version back in June. The tool intelligently suppresses background noise captured by the phone’s audio input such as typing, a door being shut, or the sounds coming from a nearby construction site. 

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Your video calls can be moved to TV with Google Meet and Chromecast

Posted on by Prakhar Khanna

The pandemic has changed the way we work. I’m now having more video calls than the number of times I eat snacks in a day. If you are anything like me, you might want to mix things up. For people like you and me, Google has started rolling out an update for Meet. It allows the software to cast calls to Chromecast and Cast-enabled devices.

Google recently made the app available on Assistant-powered smart displays like the Nest Hub Max. The company says, “it just felt right to expand Meet to even more screens in your home.”

To cast your Google Meet calls on the TV, you need to be on the latest version of Chrome on your desktop or laptop PC. It is important because Meet will use the camera, microphone and audio from your computer to facilitate the call. Further, you need to update your Chromecast as well. When done, you’ll see an option to cast the meeting before joining it. 

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Google is reportedly planning to sunset Duo in favor of Meet, and it’s hardly a surprise

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

The famed “Google Graveyard” of apps and services might soon have another carcass to bury – Google Duo – but this would be a rather successful one that currently has millions of users. As per a report by 9to5Google, the search giant is planning to sunset Duo in favor of Meet, similar to how Hangouts was decommissioned to make way for new services.

VP and GM of G Suite Javier Soltero, who was recently handed over the command of Google Duo and Messages, reportedly told employees that it does not make sense to have two video apps, and it would instead be more productive to focus the energy on just one. The project is internally codenamed Duet – made from ‘Du’ of Duo and ‘et’ of Meet.

Before Google pulls the plugs on Duo, the plan is to migrate key Duo features such as end-to-end encryption, the ability to make video calls via a contact list of phone numbers, and even 3D effects to Meet. However, the transition from operating two video apps – (Duo and Meet) to just one (Meet) might take two years, so you can rest easy for now. As for Google, this is what the company had to say in a statement:

“We’re fully invested in Duo, which has seen astonishing growth during the pandemic. People around the world are relying on video calling more than ever, and we have no plans to interrupt that. We’ll continue to invest in building new Duo features and delivering a delightful experience for our users, customers and partners. We brought the Duo organization under Javier Soltero’s leadership in May, and it follows that we’re looking at ways that our video calling products can improve alongside one another.”

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Google announces a ton of new tools and features to ease online education for everyone

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google has today kicked off its global The Anywhere School event, as part of which, the company has made a ton of announcements to make virtual education easier for students as well as teachers. Notably, some of the features outlined in the blog posts have been announced before as well, but they are yet to roll out widely as of now.

Google Meet

  • Arrives in September
    • Google Meet is getting a 7×7 grid tiled view that will allow users to see 49 participants at once.
    • Jamboard, the company’s virtual whiteboard, is also making its way to Meet so that students can share ideas.
  • Arrives in October
    • The ability to blur the background or replace it during video calls.
    • Teachers will be able to track virtual attendance.
    • A new feature called breakout rooms will allow educators to split the class into separate groups for simultaneous discussions.
  • Later this year
    • Detect raised hands to identify participants who may need help.
    • New Q&A features and a polling tool.
    • The ability to record a meeting and share it within 30 days before it expires.
  • More controls for meeting moderators
    • Moderators can stop participants from joining meetings after they’ve been evicted or denied entry twice.
    • End the meeting for everyone when the class is over.
    • Bulk accept or reject join requests.
    • Disable chat and restrict who can do a presentation.
    • A new setting that will allow the teacher to join first.

Classroom

  • A new to-do list on the Classes page to help students check the schedule of classes and projects, see what has been assessed, and more.
To-Do-List-Improvements.gif
  • Teachers will be able to share invite links with students to attend their class more easily than ever.
Link-Based-Class-Joining-Share-Mobile.gif
  • Classroom will soon get support for 10 more languages, bringing the total number to 54.
  • Teachers will also be able to assess the interaction between students with an engagement metrics tool.

Additionally, Google has announced a new app called Assignments for a school’s learning management system (LMS) targeted at institutions that don’t use Classroom. It will make it easier for teachers to grade and analyze student’s work, aside from allowing them to automatically create personalized copies of assignments and distribute them directly to students’ Drive.

Docs will soon get native citation tool as well, making it convenient for students to add and manage their sources directly in Docs by allowing them to insert in-text citations.

Source: Google Blog (1), (2)

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Google reveals a major Gmail redesign with deeper Meet, Chat and Docs integration

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google has lately been on an integration spree to make its offerings more accessible, with the latest one being the arrival of Google Meet in the Gmail app. Moving forward in the same direction, Google has today announced a major update for G Suite users that brings deeper integration for services like Chat, Meet, and Rooms in Gmail for both mobile and web – in addition to other tools like Docs and Sheets as well as third-party apps such as Trello.

The core idea is to bring all productivity platforms in one place, rather than making users switch between apps for each task. Here are a few of the features announced by the company:

  • Shared files and tasks in Chat rooms so that you can access important documents and to-dos in one place. Users can also create rooms where people from a different company (contractor or consultant) can also join the conversation.
  • Real-time collaboration, allowing users to open and co-edit a document in rooms without leaving Gmail and also chat about it simultaneously on the same screen. In the meanwhile, users can also assign a task as well.
3 docs side-by-side.jpg
  • Users can also access third-party apps such as DocuSign, Salesforce and Trello, and get actionable updates across Gmail, Chat, and rooms.
4 integrated workspace.gif
  • The ability to join a video call from a chat, create a task from a message in chat, or forward a chat message directly to inbox.
5 video chat.jpg
  • The search feature in Gmail now works across both your email inbox and Chat. Here’s how it looks:
Mail Search.gif

Moreover, users can also pin important rooms, set a notice such as “Out of office” or specify their availability status to “Do Not Disturb.” All the aforementioned changes are available only for G Suite subscribers and require a sign up to appear in the weeks to come.

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Google Meet now blocks anonymous users from joining an education meeting

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

In a bid to enhance the security aspect of Google Meet, Google has announced that its video-conferencing platform will now automatically block anonymous users from joining an education meeting. To make it clear early on, this feature will be enabled by default for end users as well as admins, and might take up to 15 days to reach all users.

Thanks to the new rule change, anonymous users will now be barred from joining a meeting organized by someone with a G Suite for Education or G Suite Enterprise for Education license. This feature will likely keep distracting miscreants at bay who crash an online meeting after receiving a publicly shared link for an online meeting.

“Anonymous users can cause disruption to learning by making noise and sharing content, and become a distraction for the meeting organizer when they try to join meetings,” says Google. However, admins will still have the option to request an exception for this rule by talking to a G Suite support executive.

Source: Google Blog (G Suite Updates)

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Google Meet will finally let users blur or set a custom background during video calls

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Google Meet has lately been given a huge push, adding more features to it and making it more easily accessible on both smartphones and PCs. But one feature it has been missing so far is the ability to blur the background or use a custom image as the background during video calls. Things are about to change soon, but for educational and enterprise users only.

The company has announced that it will allow students and teachers participating in a group video call to blur their background. Alternatively, they can choose a preset or even set a custom image stored on their PC or phone as their background. Moreover, Google is also giving admins an option to disable this functionality for scenarios where it is deemed necessary.

A few other new features coming soon to Google Meet are listed below:

  • Google Meet will also block anonymous attendees from participating in an education meeting by default, however, moderators or schools can choose to disable it.
  • Moreover, if an applicant has been rejected once from joining a meeting, they won’t be able to send a request (or “knock”) to do so again.
  • Also, a moderator can also permanently end the meeting for all participants, ensuring that no one is left lingering when the talk is over.

Source: Google Blog

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Nest Hub Max now supports group video calls on Google Meet and Duo

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

The Nest Hub Max smart display has so far only allowed 1-on-1 video calls via the Google Duo app. Well, that changes now. Google has announced that users can now start a group video call on their Nest Hub Max with just a voice command – “Hey Google, make a group call.”

To do so, users first have to create a group in the Google Duo app. Once they say the voice command, they will have to select the group on the Next Hub Max’s screen and they’re good to go. In addition to the Nest Hub Max, group video calling support via Google Duo is also arriving on third-party smart displays such as LG XBOOM AI ThinQ WK9 Smart Display, JBL Link View and Lenovo’s 8 inch and 10 inch Smart Displays.

Additionally, group video calling on the Next Hub Max now supports Google Meet as well. Users can tune into a group video call with up to 100 people at once on their smart display. All you have to do is just utter the magic words “Hey Google, start a meeting” or “Hey Google, join my next meeting.”

Source: Google Blog

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You can now start a Google Meet call by just typing meet.new in the URL bar

Posted on by Nadeem Sarwar

Continuing its total war to dominate the video conferencing segment, Google is making it even easier to start a Google Meet video call. All you have to do is just type meet.new in the URL field of your browser and hit enter, and voila, you are ready for a video chat. Here’s the new Google Meet shortcut in action:

Moreover, if you have multiple Google accounts logged into your browser, you can also specify which account you want to use for making the video call. You can do this by simply adding ‘/1’ or ‘/2’ in the address field. For example, you can type ‘meet.new/2‘ in the URL bar to use your secondary account for video conferencing.

However, this is not an entirely new trick. You can use a similar command for Google Docs docs.new), Sheets (sheets.new), and Slides (slides.new) to open a new document. In fact, it also works for a few third-party applications such as Spotify by using the playlist.new shortcut.

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Google Meet comes to the Gmail app for Android and iOS

Posted on by Lee Kelly

In a bid to make Google Meet even more easily accessible, Google is offering a deeper integration for its video calling solution inside the Gmail app for Android and iOS. Now, you can directly attend a Google Meet video call by just tapping the ‘Join‘ button in the invite sent to you on Gmail. In simple words, you no longer need the Google Meet app.

1. Join_With_Email.gif

And just to make sure that you don’t miss out on a scheduled meeting, users will soon see a huge ‘Meet‘ tab at the bottom in the Gmail app. Users can tap on it to see upcoming meetings scheduled in Google Calendar and join those that are lined up.

2. Join_Scheduled_Meeting.gif

But there’s more that the new Meet tab has to offer. In the Meet tab, users can instantly start a video call, create a shareable meeting link, and even schedule a meeting by tapping on the ‘New meeting‘ button.

There’s also a Join with a code button to let users join a video call by using a code. And in case you find the new Meet tab at the bottom too distracting, you can remove it by tapping on the hamburger menu and unchecking the Meet box.

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Zoom was experiencing issues, as Google Meet is getting more users

Posted on by Samuel Martinez

Zoom is a video conferencing app that has become popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this app has also had its shares of issues due to privacy concerns, and several reports say it was down this morning. This has helped other options, like Google Meet, to increase popularity.

Zoom confirmed on its Twitter page that it was having issues for a “limited subset of users” this morning. These issues included problems getting past the “Waiting Room,” audio and video problems, and more. The service set out to look for the causes of these problems and solved them soon enough.

On the other hand, we have Google Meet that has reached more than 50 million downloads. This has to be also by the need of having a more secure conferencing app, because the app became free, and you could also add the latest Zoom issues. Let’s remember that Google Meet used to be only open for GSuite users, but now anyone can access the service for free.

Source Tom’s Guide

Via Android Police

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