What you need to know
- Google has announced new moderation and safety controls for Meet on mobile and desktop.
- The new controls allow you to add up to 25 co-hosts who will have the same privileges as you.
- Google is rolling out the new capabilities from Augusr 16.
Google Meet is adding a bunch of new features meant to expand controls in a single meeting and keep it free from interruptions. The headline addition is the ability to delegate up to 25 co-hosts per meeting.
The new co-hosting feature makes it easier to moderate every meeting with new controls that Google has concurrently unveiled. These include the ability to enable or disable screen sharing, limit who can chat, mute all participants with one click, and end the meeting for everyone. To assign co-hosts, you'll need to turn on the "Host management" option under the "Host controls" section in Meet settings.
Until now, adding co-hosts was available only to Google Workspace for Education customers. There are limitations to the feature's availability as it stands, however, as it's rolling out only on the following Workspace editions: Business Standard, Business Plus, Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus.
In addition, Quick Access settings are also coming to one of the best video conference software. This control allows hosts to choose who can automatically join a meeting and who needs to request permission first. It's turned on by default, so meeting participants from your domain can automatically join a meeting from mobile or desktop or by dialing in.
If it's disabled, the meeting won't start unless the host jumps in first. Participants can also block anonymous users and only those who are invited can join without asking permission. However, its availability is limited only to all Workspace customers as well G Suite Basic and Business customers. This means these controls are not available to Workspace Individual users or those with personal Google accounts.
There's also a new option to quickly search for specific participants through the updated People panel. This will allow you to mute participants, kick them, or delegate co-hosting access.
The availability of these controls depends really on whether you're using Meet for personal use or as a member of a Workspace organization. The new controls will roll out on desktop and mobile devices beginning August 16.
