Google Meet Borrowing A Great Zoom Feature To Make Life Easy

Google has been in the process of merging the Meet and Duo apps. While the move seems needless, the company is throwing in a Zoom-inspired feature for the video conferencing apps which might be handy. The search giant announced through its Workspace blog that Google Meet will enable users to unmute by pressing and holding the space bar and mute again by releasing the button.

New Unmute Feature To Make Users’ Life Easy

People who use Zoom frequently will know how its push-to-talk feature makes it convenient for them to speak up for a short duration during video conferences. There are other apps like Cisco’s Webex that offer a similar feature. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, lets users unmute using a shortcut -- Ctrl + spacebar.

Google said its version of the feature will soon be rolled out to all Workspace users on September 9. However, users might have to wait another 15 days to use the shortcut. Moreover, the feature won’t be enabled by default, and users will have to turn it on from Google Meet’s settings.

Will The New Feature Come To The Original App?

Speaking of the merger between Google conferencing apps, users have been left wondering which apps suits their needs best. Google currently has the new Meet app, which merges Duo and Meet apps; the old Meet app, which is the original version, and a Duo shortcut that redirects users to the Meet app.

While all this sounds pretty confusing, the new push-to-talk feature is certainly making its way to the new Meet app. However, it’s still unclear whether the original Meet app will get to taste the new feature or not, as Google might soon pull the plug on it.

What Google plans to do with its video conferencing apps remains to be seen, but the new unmute feature would surely be a welcomed change for users.