Google is adding emoji reactions to Google Meet! That is something to cheer about—it gives us more ways to express our feelings. The ability to react with an emoji is one of few other features announced by Google in a blog post on Thursday.
The in-meeting emoji feature will allow you to drop emoji like a heart of a thumbs-up to show your feelings during a meeting. The emoji will appear in video tiles or in a list that floats up on the side of your screen.
Participants in a meeting will be able to react with an emoji instead of unmuting and disrupting an entire meeting. The in-meeting emoji reaction, according to Google, will start rolling out from April.
Picture-in-Picture mode:
Google is also bringing picture-in-picture mode To Meet. This update could let you see who is speaking even when you are not in the active Meet tab. The feature will be available when using Meet in the Chrome browser.
End-to-end encryption:
Google is bringing end-to-end encryption feature to Meet before the end of the year. Client-side encryption will be available in May for Business Plus, Enterprise Plus, and Education Plus customers.
Meet comes to Docs, Sheets, and Slides:
Google is also adding the ability to start a meeting and bring it to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation. This will enable everyone in a meeting to collaborate in real-time while having a conversation—all from the same tab.
Last year, Google added the ability for meeting hosts to mute annoying participants until locks are manually disabled. Google announced this new feature on Thursday in a move that will help to maintain some decorum during meetings.
It is often a big issue in meetings when the host must deal with problematic participants. There is always an annoying participant that must be muted for others to have a healthy conversation. Often, the host deals with someone who does not know how to turn off his mic or who just wants to be annoying for the sake of it.
The video and audio lock feature give you the edge when it comes to controlling a meeting. Besides turning off the audio of the problematic participant, you can also turn off his camera. This will turn his camera off until you unblock him in the main breakout rooms.
Google had earlier in introduced the ability for meeting hosts to mute everyone all at once. The new mute feature, however, makes gaining control of your meeting easier. Once a participant has been muted, he lacks the ability to unmute himself.
