Google Meet with New Layout

Though G meet has gone through a lot of changes over the past year, these new changes are very significant and are helpful. Thanks to Google for listening to our need and responded with new updates.

This new experience will begin rolling out by end of May. This has lot of changes and has almost responded to the needs of every teacher and student. 

You can click on to the YouTube link to watch the video explaining about – the updates in the Google meet layout.

1. Controls moved to the bottom bar

• All the controls for G Meet will be in a bar at the bottom of the screen, instead of in all corners of the screen. This will be easy to see the more students at a time.
• The toolbar will be always displayed, instead of hiding when not in use.
• On the bottom middle the controls include – Microphone, Camera, captions, hand raise, presentation controls, more options (three dots) and hang up.
• The more option button includes –

  

   

• The hang up button is on the far right, so that you don’t accidentally hang up which trying to unmute to speak.

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• On bottom left corner, you can find meeting code.
• On bottom right corner, you can find – Meeting details like joining info

– The people in the panel

– Chat box option

– And activities which has – Breakout rooms, Polls, Q&A, Recording and Whiteboard.

2. See the presentation screen

The big rectangle black that is seen when you are presenting, which takes up the major portion of the screen and do not even show what you are presenting, is now changed :

• The presentation tile will actually show you what you are presenting, which can be helpful to know what you are actually presenting.
• The presentation screen can be reduced to one tile when you unpin the presentation tile, so that you can view more number of students on the screen.
• You will be able to view at least up to 49 tiles at a time.

                                           

3. Changes in viewing yourself

• You can click on your own video tile you can make it popping out as a floating picture or as part of the grid.
• As a floating picture you can drag it around the Meet screen and place it in any area of your choice.
• The floating picture can also be dragged by its corners to change its size.
• You can also minimize your video screen to hide your screen from yourself, so that you can see more number of students.

Other updates

• You can use tile view to see more participants at once. To increase the number of tiles on the screen, you need to change the numbers of tiles from the layout option.
• You can see the tile in blue, when someone speaks.
• The tile shows mute icon if the participant is muted.

Other New features

New features that are expected in the near future includes the following :

• You will able to pin multiple video feeds.
• You will be able to reduce data usage to help you save on data cost.
• You will be able to adjust the brightness, so that can be seen in better.
• You will be able to change the backgrounds as video instead of images.