Google Meet is the preferred video conferencing platform with over 100 million daily Google Meet participants as of 2020. Easy to use and set up within a few clicks, the Google Meet video conferencing experience is seamless and free. This Google Meet cheat sheet will act as your little guide to various tricks, tips, and hacks that were created to enhance your Google Meet experience. Without further ado, let’s get into our list of the best Google Meet cheats, hacks, and tips!
My fav tip: use a laptop camera cover to always be extra safe!
In this article:
When Chrome & Meet become one!
Receiving Google Meet notifications on your Google Chrome browser is a great way to stay abreast of all meetings!
Setting alarms and writing reminders can help you remember your meetings, but it is also just as easy to forget them when you are doing so many things on your computer. Turning on your Google Chrome notifications for Google Meet is a simple google meet tip that is extremely useful. You can expect these notifications to pop out when it is time to attend the video conference. With this Gmeet hack, you are sure to be present and on time.
Enabling Google Meet notifications in Chrome is pretty simple. First, you have to make sure that you are using a Google Chrome browser and that it is open and ready. Next, look for the three vertical dots on the upper right corner of your browser window and click them. At the dropdown menu, click “Settings.”
When a new tab opens, find and click “Privacy and Security” from the menu, and this will prompt several options on the window. Select “Site Setting” and then select “Notifications.” In this part, you can add websites that can send you notifications, which means you can input Google Meet to start receiving notifications about your upcoming video calls and scheduled meetings.
Google Meet native functions
There are quite a few underused functions native to Google Meet. We’re going to go through some of the most underutilized, or useful. Below is our list of hidden gems.
Remove a participant
Considering that even the elderly participants of this viral meeting knew how to kick people out of meetings, you probably know about this one… but just in case, here are the tips!
- On Windows or macOS: Move your cursor above the image of the member you would like to eliminate and select the Remove From Meeting button. To confirm, click Remove once more.
- On Android: Select the People tab, hit the Menu (three dots) symbol beside the person you wish to delete, then tap Remove and Remove again.
Mute a participant
- On Android and iOS, tap the conference title at the top of the page, then select the person tab, then click the three dots Menu symbol next to the participant you wish to mute and select Mute.
- On Windows and macOS, move the cursor over the individual’s image, then select the Mute icon (which looks like a mic) that displays on top of their preview.
Pin participants
- On Windows and macOS, select the Pin icon on the image of the person.
- Android: To pin someone, go to the People tab, hit the Settings (three dots) icon of the individual you want to pin, and then touch Pin.
- iOS: Tap and hold a person’s symbol, then choose the Pin option from the pop-up menu.
Record your meetings!
Maybe you don’t have time to attend all of your meetings, you want a record of your high-value conferences, or you simply want to share important meeting insights. Regardless of your specific need, our best Google Meet cheat sheet tip is to record your meetings! One of the best platforms in the market that automatically records and shares your online meetings, is our platform; tl;dv! Check us out!
Check out this tl;dv below to see how it works! 📺👀
Take automated notes ✍️
Once you’ve recorded your Google Meet with tl;dv, you’ll also instantly get the sharable transcript. The video also has timestamped highlights that instantly teleports you to the exact moment in the meeting!
Visual effects & hacks for Google Meet
Not interested in the standard black background of Google Meet? There are tons of ways to spice this up. Have fun with multiple backdrop hacks for google meet by being able to change their backdrop in a video meeting. Here are some of our favorite ways to make your typical Google Meet look a little, or a lot different! P.s, we also have a whole article dedicated to this topic!
Adjust Google Meet’s video resolution
Google Meet’s “transmit and receive video quality” is set to “Accepted definition”, which is 360p, which is the Google Meet standard. Lowering the resolution can do wonders in providing you with a smooth video call experience if your network is slow. You can toggle the resolution in ‘Settings’ > ‘Video’, where you can change the maximum resolution that you send and receive.
Alternatively, if your connection has enough capacity, you can upgrade the quality to High Definition (720p) for better clarity. To do so, follow these steps:
- Tap the settings button (three dots icon) in the bottom right-hand corner and select ‘Settings’ while in a conference.
- Select the ‘Video’ tab from the pop-up menu.
- Open the ‘Send resolution’ drop-down settings and click 720p from the list of alternatives.
Similarly, open the ‘Receive resolution’ drop-down menu that appears and click 720p from the list of alternatives. Furthermore, with Send resolution, you may opt to send simply audio, which is useful if you don’t want to share your video.
Snapchat filters for your Gmeet!
Let’s be honest, you’re here for the Facetune, aren’t you! Using a tool called Snap Camera (which I have not tried), it is apparently possible. It is downloadable from snapcamera.snapchat.com
Here are the steps for downloading Snap Camera for Snapchat-like visual effects on your next Gmeet!
Live subtitles 💬
If you’re finding it hard to follow what is being said by the speaker, you can always switch on the live automatically generated captions on Google Meet, which will try its best to figure out the speaker’s words.
It comes in handy if your connection is poor and you cannot make out what they are saying, but keep in mind that it is only accurate to a certain extent, much like the automatically generated captions on YouTube.
Google Meet Cheat Sheet tip: you can even use free transcription tools, such as the tl;dv Google Meet recording and transcription platform. This way, you never lose important meeting notes, during or even after the meeting!
Switch on silent reactions
While the push button is really convenient when you want to unmute and speak, sometimes you don’t want to verbalize your thoughts at all. Imagine how simple things would be if you could communicate to the rest of the team without having to unmute and speak.
With the Nod Reactions for Google Meet extension, you can add a simple panel to the upper-left corner of your Meet app from where you can choose from many single-click reactions.
The ‘raised hands’ emoji can be especially useful if you need to let the presenter know that you need to speak (platforms like Microsoft Teams have introduced an in-built feature for this, targeted at educational institutions). The extension also comes with inclusive skin color options.
Cool Google Meet apps & tools
Take attendance ✔️
Once you download the Google Meet Attendees and Breakout Rooms extension from the Chrome App store, you can collect the attendance from an ongoing meeting on Meet with just a few taps. The attendance list will be formatted in an Excel sheet.
This is a great extension, especially for teachers who would like to take attendance at different points of a meeting to see which students are staying or leaving before the full session is over.
Set up a push to talk feature
So many mishaps occur because someone in a meeting forgot to mute themselves (and started rambling on about unrelated things to someone off-camera) or because a presenter started speaking and realized he wasn’t unmuted – to prevent all such unnecessary disruptions, you can download the Google Meet Push to Talk extension which mutes your mic by default, and unmutes it whenever you press a hotkey, which is usually the spacebar.
Server-based apps like Discord have had this feature for a while now. Be at ease knowing that you will not be heard unless you absolutely want to, and make sure everyone in the meeting has the same feature to avoid any complications.
Grid view
One annoyance some users have with Google Meet and other video conferencing tools is how the participants in focus shifts based on who is speaking. Instead of having your screen flicker onto a different attendee every few minutes, see them all at once using the Grid View chrome extension, which lets you go beyond the standard 12 attendees per screen default. You can also choose to include yourself in the grid and have a grid view by default.
Breakout rooms
Breakout rooms help large teams work in smaller groups so that they can brainstorm and come up with great new ideas or complete smaller tasks with maximum efficiency. While splitting off into groups is easier when you’re physically present, the concept of breakout rooms is changing the way video conferencing work environments are viewed.
Google Meet Attendees and Breakout Rooms Chrome extension are on top of the Google Meet Cheat Sheet because of how it helps automatically generate breakout groups.
Simply enter a Google Meet, add your attendance list to the extension by clicking the new person icon and clicking ‘show group generator’. After you choose the number of groups you want to split your larger group into, click ‘copy groups’ so you can paste it into the chatbox for the participant’s convenience. Click ‘copy meet links’ to paste all the meet links into the chatbox.
Different ways to use Gmeet
Google Meet keyboard shortcuts ⚡
Any app with keyboard shortcuts instantly becomes a lot easier to use, even though studies have shown that 90% of users don’t know how to use Ctrl+F effectively. Here are the ones that work wonders with Google Meet:
- Ctrl + E or Cmd + E to turn your camera on or off.
- Ctrl + D or Cmd + D to turn your microphone on or off.
- Ctrl + Alt + A + S to display the current users.
- Shift +? or Ctrl + / – to view the hotkeys by pressing this.
- Ctrl + Alt + A + I to view the current room information.
- Ctrl + Alt + P to hide or unhide a person(s) in a meeting.
- Shift + Ctrl (Cmd) + Alt + A, + S to announce who is currently speaking.
- Ctrl + Alt + C to display or hide the chat in a meeting.
Google Meet live stream!
Google Meet is widely used for interactive and productive meetings, seminars, and business talks. After getting used to using it this way, this may be the first time you are going to hear about this google meet trick: holding a live stream.
Livestreaming is not just for bloggers and influencers. It has a lot of benefits and is an effective method if you want to hold a webinar, company-wide conference call, press conference – the virtual world’s your oyster!
Google Meet Livestreams may seem like new Google Meet hacks and tricks but it is one of its main functions, an option waiting to be discovered and utilized. You can start a Google Meet Livestream by scheduling it in your Google Calendar. Schedule a meeting or event as you usually would following the basic steps. After which, then it would be time to add a second function or event, and this will be for your live stream audience.
The Google Meet Livestream is designed for a view-only audience. Unlike your other invited participants, your view-only guests can only watch during your presentation and would not be able to interrupt you.
The Google Meet cheat sheet tl;dr!
Using these neat tips and tricks, you can have a streamlined video conferencing experience on Google Meet. With the kind of dependency that modern work environments are developing on such collaborative meeting apps, having the upper hand can get you leaps and bounds ahead of your peers in managing and executing your work.
Still looking to ace your online meeting game? Check out our online meetings etiquette guide, here!
