Google Meet will now let you use custom backgrounds on video calls

Google is introducing customized backgrounds for its Meet videoconferencing platform, the corporate announced in a blog post. If you utilize Meet in Google’s Chrome browser you must be capable to entry the characteristic in Chrome OS in addition to on Windows and Mac laptops and desktops. The characteristic is “coming quickly” to cell, Google says.

There’s no browser extension wanted to activate customized backgrounds; you must be capable to add a background picture from your individual photograph assortment or from a library of pictures supplied by Google that features landscapes, summary artwork and (for some cause) workplaces.

Google Meet customized backgrounds

It might take as much as per week earlier than all Google Meet customers can entry the brand new customized background choice, the corporate says.

Rival videoconferencing providers Microsoft Teams and Zoom each already allow the use of customized pictures for meeting backgrounds. The three have been adding new features as extra individuals rely on video calls working and education from residence in the course of the pandemic; in current months Meet added a blur impact for assembly backgrounds, and introducing real-time captioning, low-light mode, hand-raising and a tile view (the enormous Brady Bunch display screen) that shows as much as 49 individuals.

Google integrated Meet into Gmail in May, including a sidebar hyperlink and making conferences of as much as 100 individuals with no cut-off dates out there to anyone with a Google account.

In its third-quarter earnings name Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Meet had had 235 million day by day conferences and greater than 7.5 billion day by day video calls.