How to Use Virtual Background in Google Meet
Google Meet finally has one of Zoom’s best features: virtual backgrounds. For now, you will only get it if you use Google Meet through a desktop browser (sorry app users) and it goes online through a deployment, so you may not be able to access it yet. However, the newness of this feature is too great to stop you from trying.
Once you’ve got it, you can apply your Meet virtual background anytime during a meeting. You’ll find them in a new menu, along with the background blur filter that Google added earlier this year.
- Open Google Meet in your browser.
- Start or join a new meeting.
- When you’re in, click on the three-dot menu button in the lower-right corner of your screen and select Change Background.
- Choose one of the preset backgrounds from the new menu that appears.
- Clicking on one of the options will apply the background to your video feed. Try a few of them, and then when you find one you like, click the “X” button in the upper right corner of the menu to close it and resume the appointment. Your background will remain active throughout the entire meeting until you change or disable it.
If you don’t like any of the default Meet virtual backgrounds, you can upload your own.
- Click the + button on the Meet Background Change menu.
- Find and select an image saved on your computer, then click “Open”.
- The image should appear in the Meet background. Click the “X” to close the menu.
You can upload any .JPG or .PNG file saved on your computer to use as your own background, but for best quality you should stick with 1080p (1920×1080 pixels) images. Since the popularity of video chat has skyrocketed this year, there are plenty of places to find the perfect custom background that will look good on video, and any images you can use with Zoom should work in Meet as well. However, you won’t be able to use videos or animated GIFs in Meet.