f you’re someone who prefers to keep the microphone and camera disabled on your PC, you can relate to this: you join an official meeting and attend, only to find that you haven’t enabled the access to the microphone when you are supposed to speak. To help resolve these connectivity issues, Google Meet has recently added a “green room” where you can check if your camera, microphone, speaker, and internet connection are working as expected. Here’s how you can use the feature.
Check video quality before joining a Google Meet call
1. To access the green room, open Google Meet and head to the waiting room. If you are invited to a meeting, clicking on the invitation link will give you access to this space. On the other hand, if you are hosting the meeting, creating a new meeting brings up the lobby.
2. Once you are here, you will notice a new “Check your audio and video” button in the lower left corner of the video stream. Click on it to open the green room.
3. As soon as you open the green room, you will see separate sections for microphone, speaker, and camera which show your default option. Here you can click on one of these settings and switch to another device. Once you have ensured that all of these settings are in the correct device outputs, click Next.
4. From this page, you can record a short clip of yourself to see how you will present yourself to everyone else in the meeting. Google ensures that this short clip is not saved anywhere and is only visible to you. Click Start to save the clip.
5. After a few seconds, you can play the recorded video clip. Below the clip, Google Meet will present your results, which you can use as a checklist to check the quality of your video. As you can see, Google Meet pointed out that I turned off my camera. There’s also a tips and tricks section where the company urges you to position yourself in the center of the camera and avoid bright lights behind you.
Troubleshoot Google Meet issues before the meeting
While the introduction of Green Room is a subtle change, it should prove useful to anyone who relies on Google Meet to join meetings. If you’re wondering how Google Meet’s features compare to other major video conferencing platforms, check out our in-depth comparison of Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.
Also, if you like this nifty hack, be sure to check out our articles on Automatic Google Meet Call Transcription and Changing the Background in a Google Meet Call. These tricks will surely improve your overall experience.
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