Despite the popularity of “return to work” initiatives, many employees still prefer to do their duties from the comfort of their own homes or from locations throughout the world. There is still fierce competition among video calling apps to attract more users and provide more advanced capabilities for the growing remote workforce. A new feature in Google Meet competes with one of Zoom’s best shortcuts.
Soon, you’ll be able to mute and unmute yourself in Google Meet by pressing and holding the space bar. According to a post on the Google blog(opens in a new tab), this would allow users to more easily contribute during meetings and prevent embarrassing instances where users forget to re-mute themselves after speaking. Like a walkie-talkie, this function will allow users to mute and unmute themselves without leaving the app.
Both Zoom and Cisco Webex have a “push-to-talk” option that allows users to temporarily disable their microphones. In Microsoft Teams, you can do the same thing by pressing Ctrl and the space bar.
As of September 9, Google says it will begin rolling out the update to all Workspace users, but it may take up to 15 days for the capability to appear for everyone. This function will not be activated by default and will require manual activation inside Google Meet’s configuration options.
Notable among these is the proliferation of Meet enhancements that Google has been releasing recently. Automatic lighting, portrait correction for faces, de-reverberation, and noise cancellation are just some of the major enhancements to Meet that Google revealed back in May at Google I/O 2022. Integration with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides is another improvement to Google Meet.
Recently, the firm has implemented a mute/unmute switch for use with USB headsets, microphones, and other accessories. A Google Meet meeting’s end or start could one day be controlled by hardware.
Google(opens in new tab) also announced this week that they are enhancing the functionality of “Hey Google” voice control for Google Meet devices.
With this upgrade, “the Google Assistant will only be active when a device is not in a meeting and within 10 minutes of an upcoming meeting,” users won’t have to worry about inadvertently activating Assistant during phone calls.
Yet, in its attempt to fuse its Duo software with Meet on mobile devices, the tech giant has taken a perplexing approach. As a result, in addition to Google’s original Meet app, there is also a newer version that combines Duo and Meet.
I was extremely befuddled to see two different apps with the same name and different icons for Google Meet and Google Duo on the Apple App Store. We will have to wait and see what strategy Google employs to finally untangle its video app mess.