Tag Archives: Google Meet

Hide tiles without video during Google Meet calls

What’s changing 

We’ve added the option to layouts, so that users can change their layouts to avoid cluttering the screen if they are interested to only see the participants with their videos on. This option can help reduce screen clutter and focus on video-enabled participants, meanwhile users with their videos off can be shown on screen if they speak . Note that this feature, same as other layouts options, is only specific to your meeting view and does not impact what other participants see or set for their layouts during the meeting.


To hide non-video tiles, go to Settings > Change layout > Hide tiles without video.


Getting started


Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts 

Resources



Google Meet increases support for ultra-low latency live streaming to the first 25,000 viewers

What’s changing 

For Google Workspace editions that support 100,000 viewers, we’re increasing the availability of the Google Meet ultra-low latency viewing experience for live streamed meetings from the first 10,000 viewers to the first 25,000 viewers. All additional viewers will have the standard live streaming experience. This update is available for live streams within your organization on web and mobile. 


With the ultra-low latency viewing experience, you’ll notice improvements such as a virtually lag-free streaming experience, significantly increased speaker video resolution, improved automatic camera cuts that focus on the most relevant speakers and content, and more. For more information about the ultra-low latency viewing experience, check out our original announcement as well as a recent announcement with more information about improvements.


Getting started

  • Admins: Visit our Help Center for more information turning live streaming on or off for Meet.
  • End users: When enabled by your admin, use the Help Center to learn more about live streaming a video meeting. 
    • Viewers: You can join streams as before. Reactions, polls and live Q&A work just as they do in a regular Meet video meeting. Visit the Help Center to learn more about viewing a live stream.
    • Live stream hosts: Live streams are scheduled and managed just like before. Reactions, polls and live Q&A are integrated with the Meet call and managed like usual. Automatic camera cuts are triggered by speaker activity without any host action required.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Live streaming is available for Google Workspace:
    • Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus 
    • Enterprise Essentials Plus 
    • Education Plus and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade
  • Live streamed meetings can be viewed by Google Workspace:
    • Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
    • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus 
    • Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus, and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade
    • Essentials Starter and Essentials users.
  • Not available to users with personal Google accounts.
Note: For some customers, these changes may roll out at a slower rate and they may not receive this update for several months.



Get notified about application load failures for your Google Meet Hardware devices

What’s changing 

As part of an ongoing series of improvements for managing Google Meet hardware devices, we recently announced that we would begin capturing application load failures across Meet hardware devices. Beginning today, you can now opt-in to receive email or text message notifications when these failures occur. Subscribing to alerts can help you stay on-top of what’s happening across your hardware fleet and quickly take action to resolve these issues.


Getting started


Rollout pace

  • Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on April 25, 2024. We anticipate rollout to take around six weeks to complete.

Availability

Seamlessly transfer between devices during a Google Meet call

What’s changing

In today's world, getting our work done can happen from many locations, across many devices. Beginning today, you can smoothly transfer between devices while on a Google Meet call without hanging up and rejoining. For example, if you were taking a Meet call on your mobile phone or tablet, you could smoothly switch to your laptop when you arrived at your desk. You’ll notice the new “Switch here” option when joining a meeting on your laptop, which will switch the call from your mobile devices while maintaining an ongoing conversation and without worrying about missing important information. 

Select the “Switch here” option to seamlessly switch between devices without interruption


Getting started

Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts 

Resources



External participants can now join Google Meet client-side encrypted calls

What’s changing 

We’re enhancing the experience for client-side encrypted Google Meet calls to include support for inviting external participants, including users without a Google account. Admins will need to turn on access for external participants and determine which identity provider the guest uses to join.




Who’s impacted

Admins and end users


Why it’s important

Meet already encrypts all of your data at rest and in transit between our facilities — client-side encryption gives users direct control of their encryption keys and the identity service that they choose to authenticate for those keys. Adding support for external participants means customers can collaborate with any of their stakeholders safe in the knowledge that only the meeting participants can decrypt the call media. This feature further extends the privacy and compliance capabilities of Google Meet and is the latest security enhancement, alongside encryption for in-meeting chat messages, co-host support, and the ability to join an encrypted meeting from a mobile device. For more information about client-side encryption for Google Meet, see our original announcement.


Getting started

  • Admins: Admins will need to update their IdP/KACLS configurations to open up for external participants and determine which third-party Identity Providers they can use to join a client-side encrypted meeting. Visit the Help Center for more information on providing external access to client-side encrypted content.

  • End users: 
    • Organizing encrypted calls: To turn on client-side encryption for a meeting, go to a calendar event with Meet video conferencing, navigate to Settings (cog-wheel  icon) > Security and select “Add encryption”. 
      • Contact your administrator to learn about your organization's policies and which external identity services and guests have been configured to allow access. Visit the Help Center to learn more about inviting participants to client-side encrypted meetings.
      • Note that only directly invited participants can join client-side encrypted meetings.

    • Joining encrypted calls: External users will validate their identity using a method supported by the Identity Provider. Authentication methods vary between providers. Some common options could be to log in with an account from e.g. Google or Microsoft, or by receiving an email with a one-time password. Visit the Help Center to learn more about client-side encrypted meetings.

Rollout pace


Availability

Available to Google Workspace:
  • Enterprise Plus
  • Education Standard and Plus

Use annotations to enhance your presentations in Google Meet

What’s changing 

We’re excited to introduce annotation tools in Google Meet. Presenters and their appointed co-annotators can use these tools to highlight content or make other notations over presented content. Annotations will be on by default when you begin presenting — you can open the annotations menu to access various tools such as a pen, disappearing ink, sticker, text box, and more. 


To assign a co-annotator, from the people panel or by hovering over a user’s video tile, select more options (three-dot icon) > add as co-annotator. For more information about who can co-annotators, see the “Additional details” section below. 


Annotating and co-annotating are available for select Google Workspace editions (see availability section below). Anyone can view annotated content during a meeting.


Selecting various annotation tools


Using the pen tool to highlight a specific section of presented content




Who’s impacted

End users


Why you’d use it

Annotation tools can help you better showcase content and engage with your audience while presenting content in Google Meet. They can be useful in a variety of situations, including:

  • Guiding large groups of users through content, such as a new software training
  • Capturing information in real time, like jotting down brainstorming ideas
  • Building on concepts in the classroom, like creating a sentence structure or highlighting key information to help students think through a problem
  • Demonstrating steps to solve a math equation


Additional details

At the time of launch, please note that:
  • Android users can use annotations when they present their screen and select the Entire Screen option. Android co-annotation will follow in a future release.
  • iOS users cannot use annotations when presenting. They can use annotations if they are appointed a co-annotator by a web user.
We’ll provide more information here on the Workspace Updates blog as functionality for mobile devices expands.


Meet hardware availability
Annotations will be available on Series Desk 27 and Board 65 devices during a future release. When support is added, you’ll be able to add these boards as a co-annotator.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be available when you initiate a presentation in Google Meet. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using annotations in Google Meet.

Rollout pace


Availability

Available for Google Workspace:
  • Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Frontline Starter and Standard
  • Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Education Standard, Plus, the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
  • Workspace Individual subscribers


Resources


Launch the FigJam whiteboard app directly from Google Meet Series One Board 65 and Desk 27 devices

What’s changing 

Since September 2023, Workspace users have enjoyed the convenience of launching FigJam, Figma’s free online whiteboard, directly in Google Meet. We’re excited to announce that you can now launch FigJam both in and out of an active Meet call from the Series One Board 65 and Desk 27 devices.




Who’s impacted

Admins and end users


Why you’d use it

Prior to this update, these rich collaborative tools were only available within a Meet call — now you can launch them from Board 65 and Desk 27 devices outside of a call for on-demand collaboration and problem solving. Existing Jamboard customers can find more resources related to the FigJam and Google Meet integration here.


Additional details

Migrating your Jamboard files to Figma
Figma’s integration allows users to easily migrate their existing Jamboards to FigJam files through the FigJam importer. 


Device support for additional apps
This enhancement is part of the next phase of digital whiteboarding for Google Workspace. We’ll continue to keep you updated as we add support for launching additional applications directly from Board 65 and Desk 27 devices. 


Getting started

Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers with Google Meet Board 65 and Desk 27 devices

Resources


Changes to displaying the “deprovisioned” status for Google Meet hardware devices

What’s changing 

Back in 2021, we introduced the “enrollment privilege”, which restricts who in your organization can enroll or re-enroll Google Meet hardware devices. Prior to introducing this privilege, Admins had to put devices in a “deprovisioned” state to prevent end users from re-enrolling devices until they were moved to a “pending” state. 



Since the enrollment privilege makes those labels obsolete, we are removing the “deprovisioned” state from the Admin console. You’ll no longer see devices in this state from the device status page (Devices > Google Meet Hardware > Devices), nor will you be able to filter for those labels.


Getting started

  • Admins: 
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about enrolling and re-enrolling  Google Meet hardware devices into your organization, as well as licensing FAQs.
    • To prevent unauthorized users from re-enrolling devices, opt in to Enrollment Privilege Enforcement: Menu > Google Meet hardware > Settings > Service Settings and toggle ‘Require enrollment privilege’ to ON.
  • End users: There is no end user impact or action required.

Rollout pace

  • Available now.

Availability


Introducing the AI Meetings and Messaging for Google Workspace add-on

This announcement was part of Google Cloud Next ‘24. Visit the Workspace Blog to learn more about the next wave of innovations in Workspace, including enhancements to Gemini for Google Workspace.

What’s changing

As we continue to expand our Gemini for Google Workspace offerings, we're excited to introduce the AI Meetings and Messaging add-on, which will help you have richer meetings and foster more meaningful collaboration.


At launch, the AI Meetings and Messaging add-on will give customers access to Google Meet features such as studio look, studio lighting, studio sound, and take notes for me (coming soon in Alpha) allowing customers to have more effective and efficient meetings. In the future, AI Meetings and Messaging will also provide access to Gemini features in Google Chat features such as on-demand conversation summaries and automatic translation of messages.


Who’s impacted

Admins


Why it’s important

The AI Meetings and Messaging add-on, along with the new AI Security add-on also announced at Google Cloud Next ‘24, give our customers more ways to work with AI that best suits the needs of their organization. The AI Meetings and Messaging add-on can help enhance collaboration across Meet and Chat with a variety of features such as:

  • Generative backgrounds in Google Meet
  • Studio look, studio sound, and studio lighting in Google Meet
  • Real time translated captions in Google Meet
  • Take notes for me in Google Meet (coming soon in alpha) 
  • And upcoming features like:
    • Translate for me in Google Meet and Chat for automatic language detection and translation 
    • Adaptive audio in Google Meet for synchronized audio and no feedback when multiple users join a meeting from a room using only their laptops
    • Screenshare watermark in Google Meet to help discourage the copying and unauthorized distribution of shared content
    • On-demand conversation summaries in the home view of Google Chat to get you caught up quickly

Visit our Help Center for a complete list of features available for the AI Meetings and Messaging add-on. Keep an eye on the Workspace Updates blog for new feature launches in the future.


Additional details

Some announced Meet and Chat features for this add-on will be available later this year. More details on timing will be shared in the coming months here on the Workspace Updates blog. This announcement on the Workspace Updates blog has more information about how to enable alpha testing for your end users.


Getting started

Availability

The AI Meetings and Messaging add-on is available for the following Google Workspace Editions:
  • Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Frontline Starter and Standard
  • Enterprise Essentials, Essentials Plus
  • Nonprofits

Resources


Subtly enhance your appearance with portrait touch-up when using Google Meet on the web

What’s changing 

In October 2023, we introduced portrait touch-up for Google Meet on mobile devices. Beginning today, we’re extending this functionality to Google Meet on the web. Portrait touch-up can be used to lightly touch up your appearance before or during a meeting, helping you feel more comfortable and confident in your appearance during video calls.




You can choose from two portrait touch-up modes:
  • Subtle: very light complexion smoothing, under eye lightening and eye whitening.
  • Smoothing: slightly more complexion smoothing, under eye lightening and eye whitening.

Getting started

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 15, 2024
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on April 1, 2024

Availability

  • Available to Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Teaching & Learning Upgrade, Google One and Google Workspace Individual subscribers

Resources