Google Meet now allows you to turn off the video of your interlocutors

Google Meet has announced a new feature that allows you to turn off the video of individual users during conferences. This should help reduce the number of distractions. For example, if your colleague has some strange virtual background, or someone’s cat constantly appears in front of the camera.

Google notes that the interlocutors will not receive a notification that you have disabled their video. So you can not worry that you will offend someone in this way. The arrangement of elements on the conference screen will also not change for anyone else.

The new functionality is available in both mobile and web versions of Google Meet. To turn off the video, you need to open the list of conference participants, click on the three dots opposite the user’s name and click the “Don’t watch” button.

Also, when connecting to the conference from a smartphone, you can choose the “Audio only” option, which will disable the cameras of all users, except for those who are speaking.