Google Meet, Google’s answer to Zoom and Microsoft Teams, has received an upgrade, which greatly enhances the utility of its picture-in-picture (PiP) feature. According to Google’s Workspace Update blog post, the addition of a new set of controls simplifies multitasking during a meeting, allowing users to remain active and engaged in video conferences.
With the picture-in-picture window active, a control is now available to facilitate “hand raising,” enable PiP during meeting chat, toggle captions, adjust the PiP view size, and access flexible layouts, as stated by Google. In the illustration below, a user is seen crafting an email while still maintaining visual contact with his colleagues and staying involved in the video chat. Notably, the hand-raising function and other controls remain accessible for making contributions.
This is a significant upgrade from the previous version, which had limited resizing options and a fixed aspect ratio. Furthermore, the old controls only permitted users to exit the meeting or toggle the camera/microphone. While this might appear to be a minor modification, it greatly improves the app’s utility in terms of productivity (or enables you to play the Eggman Game undetected).
The upgrade is now live for Google Meet on the Chrome browser and will be disseminated more extensively over the forthcoming weeks. Google provides a comprehensive guide on how to utilize the new features here.
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5 comments
This is huge! I’ve been struggling with the old PiP features. Excited to try out the new ones, hope they’ve really improved it.
Wow, Google’s stepping up their game, eh? didn’t expect them to make such a significant change. Can’t wait to check it out.
Finally, Google is listening to user feedback! The old controls were such a pain. Good to see ’em making updates.
So does this mean I can finally resize the PiP window? Cause that was really annoying me in the last version.
Thats a good move from Google. Better user experience, specially for us multitaskers. Can draft emails without losing the meeting.