Google Meetis one of our favoritevideo chat appsand a staple of many collaborative workspaces globally. Part of the reason for its popularity is the seamless integration with Workspace apps like Calendar, Drive, Gmail, and more. The company is now making the Google Meet experience even better with the introduction of Studio lighting and sound.
Back in August last year, Google briefly talked about how Duet AI’s integration with Google Meet will enable features likeStudio lighting and sound, and this appears to be a broader rollout of that. Google’sblog postspecifies that Studio lighting and sound are only available to people or organizations on theDuet AI for Google Workspace Enterpriseadd-on. There’s also a dedicatedsupport pagethat details the hardware requirements to access Studio lighting, which is limited to the web version for now.
Meanwhile, Studio sound will be initially available for Meet calls on the web and dial-in, with mobile apps expected to pick up support in the next few weeks. Google says Studio sound leverages AI “toimprove audio quality.” But as we touched on above, both these features are available only if you’re paying an extra $30 (per user) for the add-on.
The same Workspace blog post also announced the ability to use both backgrounds and filters in tandem for added personalization or effects during calls. These features are also much easier to access now as they’re split intoBackgrounds,Filters, andAppearancetabs as shown below.
The ability to combine multiple effects will be available to both web and mobile users, Google says. Unlike the AI-based features we talked about above, this will be available to all users. It should take up to a couple of weeks for this personalization tool to appear on Google Meet, with iOS and Android devices getting to experience it first, according to Google.
Google alsoannounceda nifty guest feature for Google Meet’s mobile apps (shown above) this week. This lets people quickly join a call without needing to sign in, thus saving some valuable time. As Google points out, this feature has been available on the web version of Meet for a while, but it’s now ready for prime time on the mobile apps as well.
A guest would either need to have the meeting code or be included in the Calendar invite. Guests who enter the meeting in this fashion will have to enter their name and “knock” before being let in by the host. If you’re on iOS, the guest functionality should be visible right away, while Android users may have to wait a couple of weeks, as per the announcement.
