What you need to know
- Meta's Portal is gaining a new productivity tool for business workers.
- The Portal Go and Portal Plus are gaining Duet Display support, turning them into second screens.
- The video-calling display is now shifting into a more business-oriented life as Meta seeks to add it into its suite of worker tools.
Meta's Portal is gaining itself a new take on life as it retunes its focus for those interested in another screen for work. Meta's once consumer-oriented Portal is now seeing its new life as a business-focused tool come to fruition.
According to The Verge, Meta's Portal is now gaining support for the Duet Display app. Duet Display is a third-party application that works in turning Android tablets or iPads into a second monitor for your desktop computer.
The Verge states the Duet Display app can be downloaded now off Meta's app store for the Portal Go and Portal Plus in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, France, Spain, and Italy. It's also worth noting the Duet app is only available for Portal Plus in Australia and New Zealand and not the smaller Go model. Users will also have to download the Duet Display software on their computers for the software to work.
In addition, Meta is also launching a new companion app for macOS in the U.S. and U.K. According to Meta, the app lets users control calls from their Macs, share their screens, and more.
The Portal Go and Portal Plus were launched last year as the company's latest additions to its line of consumer video calling devices, although they're most likely the last.
In June, Meta had then decided to make the shift into business-only hardware for its Portal devices. Meta told Android Central that the shift would align the Portal devices with other products and would allow the company to develop a suite of work tools. Meta then confirmed the consumer variants of the Portal would be discontinued. However, existing customers would still see their devices supported if they have one.
With Meta transforming its Portal into a device for those working primarily on a computer, support for Duet would come in handy as you can spread your work across two screens. Both the Portal Go and Portal Plus already work well with Facebook Messenger, Zoom, BlueJeans, Workplace, Microsoft Teams, and more.
As Facebook's answer to the best smart displays, these devices have a wide range of compatibility for video-calling programs and productivity applications that make them ideal for the work-from-home/work-from-anywhere environment that many of us have gotten used to over the past few years. Now with support as secondary displays, Meta is further positioning these devices as business-oriented tools.
