Even as the world begins to come to terms with the COVID-19 pandemic many of us are working from home more than we ever did before. Apps and services likeGoogle Meethave become cornerstones of the way we get our work done and they come in handy when the kids need to talk to their grandparents as well. Now, Google Meet has a new feature that it should probably have had long before now.
That new feature is a simple one, but it’s one that was sorely lacking before this latest update. Google says that people can now finally turn off the video feed for specific people.
Distracting coworkers be gone!
This hugely important feature - one which probably doesn’t get the attention it deserves in our estimation - was announced via a Google Workspaceblog post.
“You can now turn off the video feed from other participants during a Google Meet call,” Google says. “This can be helpful in situations where you want to focus your meeting view to just the presenter or hide participants with distracting video feeds.” It’s as if a lightbulb just went off and someone realized that the button most video-based meeting apps already have might be a good idea.
Google notes that turning off a video feed only affects your personal view as well, so doing away with the video of Bill’s kids causing chaos won’t mean that nobody else can see them anymore. They’ll have to do the hard work themselves.
The post also notes that people joining a meeting from a mobile device can now choose “Audio only” which will turn off all of the video feedsapartfrom tiles that are presenting.
Enabling the feature is simple. People can choose the three-dot button from the people panel or an individual meeting tile and then select “Don’t watch”. It’s all pretty self-explanatory and it’s probably going to become one of the most-pressed buttons of all.
