What’s changing
Inspired by your feedback, we’re rolling out a refreshed Google Meet desktop/laptop experience with updates to video feeds, the viewing and presenting experience, and the bottom bar.
Video feeds
- Hover over your video feed for options between a tile in the grid or a floating picture. You can also resize, reposition, and hide it to concentrate on the call.
- Your self-view appears in the bottom right of the grid to put more video feeds at eye-level as you look into the camera.
Viewing and presenting experience
- See what you are presenting while in Google Meet.
- Unpin the content you or others share to see more and larger video feeds.
- Participant names are always visible regardless of meeting size.
Bottom bar
- Meeting dial-in codes, attachments, the participants list, chat, and other activities are at the bottom right to create more vertical space for seeing people and content.
- Controls are consolidated in one place with descriptions available upon hover.
- Leave call button is moved away from the microphone and camera buttons to prevent accidental call hang-ups.
- Bottom bar is always visible, while not covering cover captions and bottom video feeds.
Other visual updates include
- When someone speaks, their tile is outlined in blue.
- Mute indicators are subdued to reduce visual distraction.
- When there are more participants than can be shown on the grid, a tile is added so you always remember who’s on the call.
Hide your own self-feed
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
Enjoy a simpler, more flexible experience that lets you participate with confidence in Google Meet calls as a presenter, attendee, teacher or student, knowing you have more control over your video feed, layouts, and content.
Additional details
- Users will see a banner before joining a call that says “Meet has a new look” when this refreshed user interface is enabled for them.
- Use of Chrome extensions (including the Grid View extension) could impact your experience. Uninstalling any extensions that interact with Google Meet could resolve this.
- For better presentations and to avoid mirroring, share a different window or a specific tab instead of the meeting window.
- In some cases, your self-view could appear with gray bars at the top and bottom to show you everything your camera sees. Other participants might see a cropped version of your video feed.
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
End users: This feature will be ON for everyone.
Rollout pace
Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on May 3, 2021
Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on May 17, 2021
Availability
- Available to all Workspace users. Also available if you're using Google Meet with a personal Google account.