We’re rolling out 4 top-requested Google Meet features

Remote work has become increasingly necessary for public safety and wellbeing—which makes staying connected, even while we’re apart, more important than ever. Each day, a rapidly growing number of people connect on Google Meet, and we want to make sure they have the features they need to share and be productive. 

Over the past few weeks, we’ve extended advanced Meet features to all G Suite customers so that they can get the most out of Meet. We’ve also ramped up engineering support for Meet, both to ensure we’re scaling responsibly and to bring our users four of their top-requested Meet features. These features use technologies like Google AI to improve meeting quality and user experience, and will gradually roll out to customers globally, beginning today.

• Tiled layout for larger calls: The expanded tiled layout now lets web users simultaneously see up to 16 participants at once (previously, tiled layouts only enabled you to see four people at a time). More updates are coming for larger meetings, better presentation layouts, and support across more devices.

• Present higher-quality video content with audio: Users now have the option to present a Chrome tab (instead of just presenting their window or entire screen). If you need to share high-quality video with audio content in meetings, select this option for the best experience for remote viewers. The “present a Chrome tab” feature is rolling out to general availability as of today. 

• Low-light mode: Meet can now use AI to automatically adjust your video to make you more visible to other participants in sub-optimal lighting conditions. This feature is currently rolling out to mobile users, and will be available to web users in the future. 

• Noise cancellation: To help limit interruptions to your meeting, Meet can now intelligently filter out background distractions—like your dog barking or keystrokes as you take meeting notes. Noise cancellation will begin rolling out in the coming weeks to G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers starting with web users and later to mobile users.

Helping our customers succeed

As more customers navigate this transition, it’s exciting to hear the stories they share with us about how Meet is helping their organizations. For example, PwC, a global professional services organization and long-time G Suite customer, recently enabled more than 275,000 people to work from home in response to COVID-19. In a short time, Meet video meetings at PwC tripled, without impacting their ability to seamlessly connect teams internally and externally with their customers and partners.

Continuing to uphold our robust privacy commitments and data protections

While serving our customers through an accelerated feature roadmap is important, nothing takes precedence over user privacy and safety. Meet uses the same protections that Google uses to secure user data and safeguard privacy. Meet’s anti-abuse features are turned on by default, video meetings are encrypted in transit by default and our compliance certifications can help support regulatory requirements. We are constantly finding ways to enhance security and privacy for all users, such as adding new moderator controls to help educators more effectively manage their meetings and protect their students.

Learn more about what we’re doing to help keep your meetings secure here.

Already loving tiled layout? Show us how you use #GoogleMeet for your team’s meeting of minds with a picture of the tiled view feature and the hashtag #MeetOurTeam.