What you need to know
- Google Duo may add the ability to divide video chat participants into groups with breakout rooms in the future.
- The app could also let users live stream and record a video call in a future update, similar to Meet's feature.
- These features were discovered during a teardown of Duo's most recent version.
Updates for Google Duo have been few and far between ever since the search giant shifted its focus to Google Meet. However, for the first time in a long while, Duo may finally get some love in a future update after it received a simplified home screen interface in July of last year.
Google has rolled out a new version of the Duo app on Android phones, and a teardown performed by XDA Developers reveals some familiar discoveries. The updated version contains some strings of code suggesting that the video chat app will pick up breakout rooms.
If you've often used Google Meet to hold virtual meetings with colleagues or friends, you're probably already familiar with breakout rooms. It allows video chat moderators to divide participants into smaller groups during a conference. If Google ever releases this feature, it will be useful for large video chats with up to 32 people.
Breakout rooms arrived on Meet in late 2020, along with other features such as custom backgrounds and attendance tracking. It's a welcome addition to Duo, assuming it makes its way to the app, after Google reportedly scrapped plans to merge Duo and Meet into a single app.
It's not the only Meet feature that Duo might pick up in the future. The teardown also hints at the ability to live stream and record a video meeting. It specifically contains references to messages such as "Live stream will start soon" and "This meeting is being streamed and recorded."
These capabilities are not available to anyone at the moment as they're still in development. But it won't hurt if Google rolls them out in the future.
