Google Meet is an accessible and easy-to-use virtual meeting platform for casual users and workspace users, hosting everything from team check-ins to large presentations and town halls. It plays nice with everything in the Google ecosystem, so if you or your employer are locked in, it’s likely the best choice for video conferencing. Here are 10 hacks to get the most out of Google Mate.

Use meet.new to quickly start an unscheduled meeting.

If you need to start a video call at a moment’s notice, you can open Google Meet and hit New Meeting > Start an Instant Meeting.Or you can simply type. meet new in your browser. This link automatically starts the meeting. No extra clicks required. From here, you’ll see a pop-up window with the option to copy the meeting link to send or share invitations.

Enable captions and translation on live calls so you can turn off the audio

If you’ve forgotten your headphones or need to mute your meeting audio for any reason, you can turn on the accessibility feature to read captions instead. For live captions in the same language, just tap Turn on captions. Press the button below the meeting to launch subtitles. If you’re on a call in another language, you can use translated captions. Dozens of languages. go to More options > Settings > Captionsselect Language of the meetingand toggle. Translated headlines But then select the language in which you want to translate the titles. While Live Caption is a standard feature of Google Mate (also Available in several languages.), translation is currently limited to select Business and Enterprise Workspace editions.

Turn on noise cancellation to hide that you’re in a public place.

If you’re joining a virtual meeting from a coffee shop, bar, or other location that isn’t your home office or workplace, you probably don’t want the ambient environment to be obvious or distracting. Besides that Blur or add a virtual backgroundyou can turn on noise cancellation to filter out anything that isn’t speech, like typing or room echo. This A five-year demo Shows functional character despite some speech distortion.

Before the meeting, you will see this option in it. Settings. To turn it on when you’re in a meeting, go to More options > Settings > Audio And turn it on Noise cancellation. (The process is the same on desktop, Android, and iOS.) Device-based noise cancellation is available to all Android users, while cloud-based noise cancellation works on mobile and desktop on certain Google Workspace plans.

Use picture-in-picture to multitask during meetings without leaving yourself.

When you’re multitasking during a virtual meeting—and not looking at your camera—you don’t want it to be obvious. If you’re using Google Mate in Chrome, Picture-in-Picture will overlay your video on any other tab, window or app you’re navigating to, so it looks like you’re busy. You can set picture-in-picture to automatically activate when you switch tabs during a meeting. To grant this permission, hover over the URL and click. View site information To the left, then toggle. Automatic picture in picture Or, you can enable it as needed during the meeting below. More options > Open Picture-in-Picture.. You can then move or resize the UI to your liking.

Use companion mode or integrated audio so you can join multiple devices in the same room

With hybrid teams, you can have users call from their own devices, while others share a conference camera in an office. In this situation, people who are in person are similarly unable to chat, react, answer polls, annotate, or otherwise engage in the call. Google Mate has one. Adaptive audio feature which allows everyone in the room to join under their own account (without headphones) to prevent echo and feedback by merging mic and speaker feeds. Audio is automatically merged when two or more nearby devices sign in to the same meeting, although you may be asked to confirm manually. To disable integrated audio, go to Menu > Turn off merging your audio.. An alternative is companion mode, which allows participants to join on their own devices to facilitate participation, which are then paired with meeting room hardware that plays audio and video. This feature is available to Google Workspace users.

Use Google Slides to invite people to present with you.

It makes sense that Google wants you to use its apps across the board, which is why Slides is integrated directly into Meet. You can share content from PowerPoint or Canva instead, but if Meet is your conferencing platform (and you have an eligible workspace account), there are some good reasons to build your deck in Slides. First, it solves the most frustrating part of virtual presentations: being able to see your slides, participants, and chat all in one interface. You can also add co-presenters, so that more than one person can control the slides that the main presenter shares. That way, you won’t need to switch screen sharing between presenters or ask the person who shared initially to move on to the next slide. To use this feature, hover over a presentation title, click Add a co-presenter.and check the box next to one or more participants. Slides also allow for live annotation for real-time collaboration.

Set up polls for live feedback during meetings.

Meeting chats can be inefficient for engaging participants and gathering feedback, especially if there are hundreds of attendees. Instead, use Meet’s polls feature, which prompts participants to vote on answers. It can be used for icebreaker questions at the start of a call, to coordinate upcoming meeting times, ask for input on future topics, or get a scaled rating of a presentation. Can create polls under meeting moderators. Go to Meeting Tools > Polls > Start Poll.. Type prompts and answers, then click . Launch. (Or save (if you want to use it later in the meeting). You can allow participants to vote anonymously with it. Answers appear without names. Toggle

Turn on attendance tracking and use it to send follow-ups.

Attending a virtual meeting can be important to ensure that the participants who need to be there actually attend, but it can also be useful for knowing who to follow up with later. If you have hundreds of people on a call, you may not want to count or note each person in the participant list. Instead, you can get a Google Sheets attendance report that includes names, emails, and how long attendees were present. You can easily translate this into a mailing list for action items, marketing materials, or thank you notes. To enable the feature in a meeting, go to Host Controls and toggle Attendance tracking But this feature is available on most workspace accounts.

Turn on gesture detection to simulate an in-person class or meeting.

In a typical virtual meeting, participants use a “raise hand” button to get in line to speak. But if Google Mate’s gesture detection feature is enabled, you can raise your hand. Literally raise your hand This can make your class or meeting feel a little more natural—although, of course, chaos can ensue if students or attendees use gesture detection just for fun. Hosts can turn on gesture detection in live meetings. More options > Settings > Reactions. There are a few things to be aware of with this feature, though: it only works when a hand is visible and away from your face and body, and it’s passive if you’re actively speaking. You can’t even hand down a gesture. Instead, you’ll click Raise your hand Button gesture detection is available for Workspace, Business and Enterprise accounts, as well as Teaching and Learning upgrade users.

Use “Take notes for me” to create a searchable archive of meeting summaries.

Google Workspace users have access to various Gemini features in Meet, including “Take Notes for Me” that automatically captures and summarizes meeting notes in a Google Doc. After the call ends, the document is saved to the administrator’s Drive and attached to the Google Calendar event for participants to refer to. It makes meeting summaries easily searchable, so you can quickly find notes on what was discussed during which call. As an administrator, you can Enable this feature. You can turn it on before a meeting and via a calendar invite, or by tapping after you join. Take notes for me. Gemini icon at the top right of your screen and selecting Start taking notes..