Video calling apps have seen plenty of use since the COVID-19 pandemic began as so many of us are spending more time at home—working and otherwise. To keep up with demand, Google gave every Google account holder access to Google Meet for their video calls. In other words, Meet isn’t just included in paid G Suite plans—anyone with a Gmail address can use it, though free account holders are now limited to 60-minute calls.
With so many schools, businesses, and groups of friends using Google Meet, it’s worth taking a few minutes to learn how to get the most out of the app.
1. Record a Mic and Camera Check
Google Meet has excellent tools for checking your camera and microphone before you join a call. In fact, it’s one of the most thorough A/V checks we’ve seen in a free video calling app.
Before you join any call, even one that you host, Google Meet shows a preview of your video. At the bottom is a button that says, “Check your audio and video.” When you click that button, you see the input and output sources for your audio, microphone, and camera, and you can change them if you need to. Then, when you click or press Next, the app gives you an option to record a short video of yourself speaking that you can play back. What better way to know how you’ll look and sound than to see and hear it for yourself?
2. Change or Blur Your Background
For your privacy or just for fun, you can change what appears behind you on a Google Meet call. Some apps call this feature a virtual background. With Google Meet, you can blur the background lightly or heavily, choose a background image from the app’s library, or upload one of your own.
To change your background before joining a meeting, click to join a meeting and look for the Change Background button on the preview screen. Then choose whether to blur your background, pick an image, or add an image.
If you’re creating an instant meeting, you won’t see the preview screen, but you can always change your background during a meeting. Click the three stacked dots in the lower right corner and select Change Background.
3. Change the Layout
Depending on what kind of call you’re on, you may want to see everyone at once or just the person speaking. Change the display of people’s faces by clicking the three stacked dots in the lower right corner and choosing Change Layout. Your options are:
- Auto, meaning the app picks the layout for you
- Tiled, which puts everyone’s window (or as many as can fit) on screen at once; you might have heard of it as Gallery View in other apps
- Spotlight, which dynamically shows whoever is speaking at the moment
- Sidebar, which puts the active speaker in a large central window and shows everyone else in smaller tiles on the right.
There’s also a slider bar to adjust how many faces you see on the screen at once in different views.
Don’t want to see your own face? Click the tile removal icon on your own window or in the tiny preview of your video in the upper-right corner.
4. Pin the Most Important Speaker
When you want one person’s video feed to be front and center, you can pin it. If you put your mouse pointer over the person’s video window, you’ll get a pop-up menu with three icons: a pin, a microphone, and a no-entry symbol. Click the pin to keep that person visible, and click it again to unpin them. The same menu can be accessed on mobile devices by long-pressing the person’s window.
You can also access pinning from the Meeting Details panel. Find the person you want to see and click the pin icon. To undo this setting, click in the same place and the option now says Unpin.
5. Mute Participants
You have the power to mute other participants, which allows you to control unwanted noise and interruptions. To mute a participant, open the Meeting Details panel, which appears on the right side of the screen (it’s the icon of a person’s head and shoulders; when you mouse over it, it says Show Everyone). You can tell who’s noisy by looking for activity in the three horizontal dots next to their name and profile picture. Click those three dots and an option to mute them appears.
You can also mute someone by putting your mouse over their video, or long-pressing it on mobile, and clicking the microphone icon on the pop-up menu.
The participant can always unmute their microphone. If someone continues to be problematic, you can kick them out of the meeting by clicking on the three vertically stacked dots near their name in the Meeting Details panel and selecting Remove From Meeting, or clicking or tapping the Remove icon in the pop-up menu.
6. Turn on Captioning
Google Meet has automatic captioning in English, French, German, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Spanish (European and Latin American). When you turn on captioning, you see a transcription of what each person says on the screen. It’s not foolproof, but it works better than you might expect.
The option appears at the bottom of the screen. If you don’t see it, just jiggle your cursor and it should appear. When you first enable captions, your default language will appear, and if you click on it, you can switch to another supported language.
7. Cast Your Meeting to Another Display
If you have other displays that support Google Meet, such as a Nest Hub Max or a Chromecast, you can view your video call on them. Click the three vertically stacked dots on the bottom of the screen and choose Cast This Meeting. Your available devices appear in the browser, at the top right. Choose the one you want, and your meeting screen appears on it.
This option only casts the meeting to another device; it doesn’t use the camera or audio input from that device when they are included, as in the case of a Nest Hub Max, for example. The instructions for joining meetings from a Nest device are different. By default, you will still be recording your video and audio from your primary device (i.e., your laptop, computer, or mobile device).
8. Send Participants to Breakout Rooms
In late 2020, Google Meet launched Breakout Rooms, but only for certain account types (see below). Breakout rooms allow groups of meeting participants to break away from the main meeting to discuss something privately. At the end of a breakout session, all participants can rejoin the main meeting. This feature is available to most education and business customers, as long as the account administrator has enabled the correct account privileges for it.
Once all that is set, start a video call and click Activities in the top right. Choose Breakout Rooms.
A Breakout Rooms panel appears, and you can choose the number of rooms you want to create, the maximum being 100. You can then assign people to breakout rooms or let Google Meet assign them randomly. Finally, click Open rooms for the breakout sessions to start.
Participants can ask the host for help, and the host can pop in and out of different rooms as needed.
Account types supported: G Suite Business, Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and G Suite Enterprise for Education with permissions enabled
9. Troubleshoot a Poor Connection
Google Meet gives you a few ways to potentially improve a lousy connection.
First, you can downgrade the quality of the video and audio from high definition or automatic to standard. It usually causes the video to look grainier, but it also typically helps resolve problems related to a poor connection. Click the three stacked dots in the bottom right and choose Settings. Navigate to Video. Where it says Send Resolution and Receive Resolution, change them to Standard Definition (360p) or Standard Definition (360p).
Another option is to check your computer’s internet connection and CPU usage, which Google Meet has built into the app. Click the three stacked dots and choose Troubleshooting & Help. You should see two icons, one for Network Stability and one for System Load. Additionally, you get two real-time bar graphs that give you more insight. Follow the tips here to improve the connection. Try, for example, moving closer to the Wi-Fi router, stopping other streaming or high-bandwidth activities, and closing tabs in your browser.
If your connection troubles persist, see our tips for boosting your Wi-Fi signal.
10. Install Extensions for More
Because Google Meet runs in a browser, it’s easy to extend its functionality with third-party extensions. The Chrome web store in particular has plenty of extensions for Google Meet. For example, you can add a timer to help you keep track of a video call or look for more general “enhancement” extensions that add features such as attendance capture, quizzes, and polls.
Do keep security in mind when installing extensions. Be sure to look at the extension’s privacy policy and don’t install anything that wants to capture your data.
What’s Next for Google Meet?
As of this writing, Google Meet still lags behind Zoom and Microsoft Teams on a couple of fronts. However, Google has been slowly adding new features, including Q&A tools and polls for some accounts.
No matter which app you use, check out all our tips for better video meetings.
