Google Meet Rolls Out New Feature, Will Let Hosts Pin Up to Three Tiles for All Participants

Google Meet is getting a new feature that can be particularly helpful in large meetings. Meeting hosts or co-hosts can now pin up to three specific tiles for all the meeting participants. This will enable the participants to see the same people, presentations, or items highlighted on the screen, without having to do anything at their end. Earlier, while participants could pin up to three tiles, however, they would not be reflected on anyone else's screen. All users will have the option to unpin the participants at their end.

Google Workspace announced the feature in a blog post on February 5, where it stated, “If you're a meeting host or co-host, you can now pin up to three specific tiles for all meeting participants.” These three tiles can be participants, presentations, other items, or a combination of the three. Google says this feature will be helpful in large meetings or webinars where there are a lot of users attending, and focusing on the speaker might be difficult without pinning.

While earlier, users could pin participants and presentations at their end, there was no unified approach to this. In large meetings, this could lead to confusion and some users may struggle to find the right person to pin. With this new Google Meet feature, hosts and co-hosts can take over this task and help conduct a better-focused session.

Last month, the online conferencing platform rolled out three personalisation features for users, including an interface redesign for visual effects. Google Meet Backgrounds now lets participants pick a wide variety of backgrounds including high-resolution photos, immersive photos, as well as 360-degree backgrounds. The Filters option allows participants to add accessories such as hats, or turn them into animals and more. The Appearance tab is for customizing lighting, framing, or video quality.

Google Meets also debuted Studio Lighting on the web. This feature enables adding studio-quality lighting to the participant's frame. There is an Auto option to add the effect automatically, and a Custom option that lets you make granular changes to the brightness, position and colour of the lighting. Studio sound was also added which uses AI to improve audio quality.