Google Meet introduced a new feature, letting hosts pin three tiles to all participants

Google Mate is getting a new feature that can be especially helpful in large meetings. Meeting hosts or co-hosts can now pin up to three specific tiles to all meeting participants. This will enable participants to highlight the same people, presentations, or items on the screen without having to do anything on their end. Previously, while participants could pin three tiles, however, they would not be reflected on someone else’s screen. All users will have the option to unpin participants at their end.

Google Workspace announced “If you’re a meeting host or co-host, you can now pin three specific tiles to all meeting participants,” the feature was announced in a blog post on February 5. These three tiles can be participants, offers, other objects, or a combination of all three. Google says the feature will be helpful in large meetings or webinars where a large number of users are attending, and it may be difficult to focus on the speaker without being pinned.

While earlier, users could pin participants and offers on their end, there was no unified approach for this. In large meetings, this can be confusing and some users may struggle to find the right person to pin. With this new Google Meet feature, hosts and co-hosts can handle this task and help conduct better focused sessions.

Last month, the online conferencing platform introduced three personalization features for users, including redesigning the interface for visual effects. Google Meet Backgrounds now lets participants choose from a variety of backgrounds, including high-resolution images, immersive images, as well as 360-degree backgrounds. The Filters option allows participants to add accessories like hats or turn them into animals. The Appearance tab is for customizing lighting, framing, or video quality.

Google Mates also launched Studio Lighting on the web. This feature enables adding studio-quality lighting to participants’ frames. There’s an auto option to add the effect automatically, and a custom option that lets you make granular changes to the light’s brightness, position, and color. Also added is Studio Sound which uses AI to improve audio quality.