10 Google Meet Life Hacks Every User Should Know
Google Meet is an accessible and easy-to-use virtual meeting platform suitable for both individuals and Workspace customers. It allows for a wide range of events, from team check-ins to large-scale presentations and town halls. Google Meet works seamlessly with all other Google ecosystem platforms, so if you or your employer is committed to one of them, it’s likely the best choice for video conferencing. Here are 10 tips for getting the most out of Google Meet.
Use meet.new to quickly start an impromptu meeting.
If you need to start a video call immediately, you can open Google Meet and click “New Meeting” > “Start an Instant Meeting” —or simply enter meet.new in your browser. This link will automatically start the meeting; no additional clicks are required. A pop-up window will then appear with the option to send invitations or copy the meeting link for sharing.
Turn on subtitles and translation during calls so you can mute them.
If you forgot your headphones or need to mute your audio during a meeting, you can enable accessibility features to read captions instead. To turn on captions in the same language, simply click the “Turn on captions” button at the bottom of the meeting page. If you’re participating in a call in another language, you can use translated captions in dozens of languages . Go to “More options” > “Settings” > “Captions,” select “Meeting language ,” and turn on “Translated captions .” Then, select the language you want the captions translated into. While live captions are a standard feature of Google Meet (also available in many languages ), translation is currently only available in certain Business and Enterprise Workspace editions.
Turn on noise reduction to hide the fact that you are in a public place.
If you’re joining a virtual meeting from a cafe, bar, or other location other than your home office or coworking space, you probably don’t want your surroundings to be noticeable or distracting. In addition to blurring or adding a virtual background , you can enable noise reduction to filter out anything that isn’t speech, such as typing sounds or room echoes. This five-year-old demo shows this feature in action, albeit with some speech distortion.
Before a meeting starts, you’ll see this option in Settings . To enable it during a meeting, go to More options > Settings > Audio and turn on Noise cancellation . (The process is similar for desktop, Android, and iOS.) Device-level noise cancellation is available to all Android users, while cloud-based noise cancellation works on mobile devices and computers for users with certain Google Workspace plans.
Use picture-in-picture mode to multitask during meetings without appearing distracted.
When you’re multitasking during a virtual meeting and aren’t looking at the camera, you don’t want it to be obvious. If you’re using Google Meet in Chrome, picture-in-picture mode will overlay your video on any other tab, window, or app you switch to, giving the impression you’re actively participating. You can set picture-in-picture mode to automatically turn on when you switch tabs during a meeting. To enable this, hover over the URL and click “View site information” on the left, then turn on “Automatic picture-in-picture mode.” Alternatively, you can enable it as needed during the meeting under “Advanced options” > “Open picture-in-picture mode.” You can then move or resize the interface as needed.
Use companion mode or combined audio to connect from multiple devices in the same room.
In hybrid teams, users can connect from their own devices, while others share a conference camera in the office. In this situation, those present in person can’t chat, react, respond to polls, take notes, or otherwise participate in the call as they previously could. Google Meet has a feature called adaptive audio , which allows all participants in the room to connect under their own accounts (without headphones), ensuring real-time communication by combining microphone and speaker signals to prevent echo and feedback. Audio is automatically merged when two or more nearby devices are connected to the same meeting, although you may be asked to confirm this manually. To disable audio merging, go to Menu > Stop Audio Merging . An alternative is “companion” mode, which allows participants to connect from their own devices for easier participation, which are then paired with the conference room equipment providing audio and video. This feature is available to Google Workspace users.
Use Google Slides to invite people to speak with you.
It makes sense that Google wants you to use its apps everywhere, so Slides is integrated directly into Meet. You can screen share content from PowerPoint or Canva, but there are several compelling reasons to create a presentation in Slides if Meet is your meeting platform (and you have the right Workspace account). First, it solves the most frustrating part of virtual presentations: seeing slides, participants, and chat in a single interface. You can also add co-presenters, so multiple people can control the slides the main presenter is sharing. This way, you don’t have to switch screen sharing between presenters or ask the person who was originally sharing a slide to move on to the next slide. To use this feature, hover over the presentation title, click “Add Co-Presenter,” and check the box next to one or more participants. Slides also allows you to add real-time annotations for collaboration.
Set up polls to collect real-time feedback during meetings.
Chat rooms in conferences can be inconvenient for engaging participants and collecting feedback, especially when hundreds of people are participating. Instead, use Meet’s polling feature, which prompts participants to vote on answers. This can be used for questions to break the ice at the beginning of a call, to coordinate upcoming meetings, to gather feedback on upcoming topics, or to rate a presentation on a scale. Conference moderators can create polls in “Conference Tools” > “Polls” > “Start Poll.” Enter the question and answers, then click “Start” (or “Save” if you want to use the poll later during the meeting). You can allow participants to vote anonymously by toggleing “Answers are displayed anonymously.”
Enable attendance tracking and use it to send reminders.
Tracking attendance in virtual meetings can be crucial for ensuring the right participants are present and for determining who to follow up with after the meeting. If you have hundreds of people on a call, you won’t want to count or record each participant individually. Instead, you can get an attendance report in Google Sheets with names, email addresses, and attendance duration. You can easily convert this into a mailing list for action items, marketing materials, or thank-you emails. To enable this feature in a meeting, go to “Organizer Management” and turn on attendance tracking . This feature is available in most Workspace accounts.
Enable gesture recognition to simulate an in-person class or meeting.
In typical virtual meetings, participants use the “Raise Hand” button to take the turn to speak. But if gesture recognition is enabled in Google Meet, you can raise your hand by literally raising it. This can make your lesson or meeting a little more natural—though, of course, chaos can result if students or participants use gesture recognition just for fun. Hosts can enable gesture recognition in online meetings under More Options > Settings > Reactions . However, there are a few things to keep in mind about this feature: it only works when one hand is visible and raised away from your face and body, and it turns off if you’re actively speaking. You also can’t lower your hand by gesture; instead, you tap the “Raise Hand” button. Gesture recognition is available to users with Workspace, Business, and Enterprise accounts, as well as customers with the Teaching and Learning Upgrade.
Use the “take notes for me” feature to create a searchable archive of meeting summaries.
Google Workspace users have access to various Gemini features in Meet, including “Take Notes for Me,” which automatically saves and summarizes meeting notes in a Google Docs document. After the call ends, the document is saved to the host’s Google Drive and attached to a Google Calendar event for participants to access. This makes meeting summaries easily searchable, so you can quickly find notes on what was discussed and during which call. As the host, you can enable this feature before the meeting starts and through a calendar invite, or you can enable it after joining by clicking the Gemini ” Take Notes for Me” icon in the upper-right corner of the screen and selecting “Start Taking Notes.”