Google Meet is an accessible and easy-to-use virtual meeting platform for casual users and workspace customers, hosting everything from team check-ins to large presentations and town halls. It plays great with everything else in the Google ecosystem, so if you or your employer are locked in, it’s likely the top choice for video conferencing. Here are 10 hacks to get the most out of Google Meet.
Use meet.new to quickly start an unscheduled meeting
If you need to start a video call at a moment’s notice, you can open Google Meet and hit New Meeting > Start an Instant Meeting-Or you can simply type Meet. New in your browser. This link automatically starts the meeting; No extra clicks required. From here, you’ll see a pop-up window with the option to copy the meeting link to send or share invitations.
Enable captions and translation on live calls so you can turn off the audio
If you forgot your headphones or need to mute your meeting audio for any reason, you can turn on accessibility features to read captions. For live captions in the same language, just tap Turn on captions button at the bottom of the meeting to launch subtitles. If you’re on a call in which another language is being spoken, you can use translated captions from here Dozens of languages. go to More options > Settings > Captionschoose Language of the meetingand toggle Translated captions Then select the language you want the captions to be translated into. While live captions are a standard Google Meet feature (even Available in many languages), translation is currently limited to Business and Enterprise Workspace editions.
Turn on noise cancellation to hide that you’re in a public place
If you’re joining a virtual meeting from a coffee shop, bar, or other location that isn’t your home office or coworking space, you probably don’t want the surroundings to be obvious or distracting. Besides this Adding blur or virtual backgroundYou can turn on noise cancellation to filter out anything that isn’t speech, like typing or room echo. This A five year old demo Shows functional symptom despite slight speech disorder.
Before the meeting, you will see this option in settings. To turn it on once you’re in a meeting, go to More options > Settings > Audio and turn on noise cancellation. (The process is the same on desktop, Android, and iOS.) Device-based noise cancellation is available to all Android users, while cloud-based noise cancellation works on mobile and desktop on certain Google Workspace plans.
Use picture-in-picture to multitask during a meeting without taking yourself away
When you’re multitasking during a virtual meeting—and not looking at your camera—you don’t want it to be obvious. If you’re using Google Meet in Chrome, Picture-in-Picture will overlay your video on any other tab, window, or app you’re navigating to, so it looks like you’re engaged. You can set picture-in-picture to trigger automatically when you switch tabs during a meeting. To grant this permission, hover over the URL and click View site information To the left, then toggle Automatic picture-in-picture On or, you can enable it as needed during the meeting below Open More Options > Picture in Picture. You can then move or resize the UI to your liking.
Use companion mode or merged audio so you can connect to multiple devices in the same room
With hybrid teams, you can have users call from their own devices, while others share a conference camera in the office. In that situation, those who are in-person are not able to chat, react, respond to polls, comment, or otherwise join the call in the same way. Google Meet has Adaptive audio feature which allows each person in the room to join under their own account (without headphones) by merging mic and speaker feeds, preventing echo and feedback. Audio merges automatically when two or more nearby devices sign in to the same meeting, although you may be asked to confirm manually. To disable merged audio, go to Menu > Stop merging your audio. There is an optional companion mode, which allows attendees to join on their own devices to facilitate participation, which are then paired with meeting room hardware that plays audio and video. This feature is available for Google Workspace users.
Use Google Slides to invite people to present with you
It makes sense that Google wants you to use its apps across the board, which is why Slides is integrated directly into Meet. You can screen content from PowerPoint or Canva instead, but if Meet is your conferencing platform (and you have the right workspace account) there are some good reasons to build your deck in slides. First, it solves the most frustrating part of virtual presentations: being able to see your slides, participants, and chat all in the same interface. You can also add co-presenters, so multiple people can control the slides the main presenter is sharing. As such, you don’t need to switch screen sharing between presenters or ask the person who initially shared to move to the next slide. To use this feature, hover over a presentation title, click Add a co-presenterand check the box next to one or more participants. Slides also allows live annotation for real-time collaboration.
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Set up polls for live feedback during meetings
Meeting chats can be unwieldy for engaging participants and gathering feedback, especially if there are hundreds of attendees. Instead, use Meet’s polling feature, which prompts attendees to vote on responses. This can be used for icebreaker questions at the beginning of a call, to coordinate the timing of an upcoming meeting, to get input on future topics, or to get a scaled rating of a presentation. A meeting may form a pool under moderators Start Meeting Tools > Polling > Polling. Type the prompts and answers, then click launch (or save if you want to use it later in the meeting). You can allow participants to vote together anonymously Responses appear without names Toggle
Turn on attendance tracking and use it to send follow-ups
Attending a virtual meeting can be necessary to ensure that the participants who need to be there actually show up, but it can also be useful to know who to follow up with afterwards. If your call has hundreds of people, you may not want to count or record each person in the participant list. Instead, you can get a Google Sheets attendance report with names, emails, and how long you were present. You can easily translate this into a mailing list for action items, marketing materials or thank you notes. To enable the feature in a meeting, go to Host controls and toggle Attendance tracking This feature is available on most workspace accounts.
Turn on gesture detection to simulate an in-person class or meeting
In a typical virtual meeting, participants use a “raise hand” button to line up to speak. But if Google Meet’s gesture detection feature is enabled, you can raise your hand Literally By raising your hand. This makes your class or meeting feel a little more natural—although, of course, chaos can ensue if students or attendees use gesture detection just for fun. Under Hosts can turn on gesture detection in live meetings More options > Settings > Reactions. A few things to be aware of with this feature, however: it only works when a hand is visible and raised away from your face and body, and is disabled if you’re actively speaking. You can’t hand down with gestures, either; Instead, you’ll click Hands up Gesture search is available to users with Button Workspace, Business and Enterprise accounts, as well as Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers.
Use “Take notes for me” to create a searchable archive of meeting summaries
Google Workspace users have access to a variety of Gemini features in Meet, including “Take Notes for Me,” which automatically captures and summarizes meeting notes in a Google Doc. After the call ends, the document is saved to the organizer’s Drive and linked to the Google Calendar event for attendees to reference. This makes meeting summaries easily searchable, so you can quickly get a note of what was discussed during the call. As an organizer, you can Enable this feature You can turn it on before a meeting and via a calendar invitation, or when you tap once to join Take note for me Gemini icon at the top-right of your screen and select Start taking notes.
