Audio/video locking is here to keep ‘enthusiastic’ people at bay
The age of video conferencing brought on by the pandemic has made meetings easier to attend, and maybe best of all, acceptable to do so remotely. But it can also be as convenient as it is chaotic, and when you’re in a Google Meet room with a big crowd of people (whether it’s work-related or just involving friends and family), there’s always the risk you’ve got to deal with that one guy who doesn’t know how to turn off his mic — or worse, he’s actively interrupting the host just for the sake of being annoying. While kicking people out has always been an option, as well as temporarily muting them, Google Meet is now adding a feature that allows you to lock that mute for the duration of a call.
Hosts will be able to mute problem participants, or block their video feed, and keep them from turning them on again until they manually disable the lock. It’s kinda like a “master” mute of sorts — users won’t be able to turn on their mic or camera back on until you, as the host, manually give them permission to do so.
This actually sounds like a handy feature to have for certain specific scenarios where a meeting participant is being disruptive. In fact, Google’s announcement post for the feature specifically mentions you can “address disruptive participants” with it. You can also use it if you want to treat Google Meet more similarly to something like Twitter Spaces, where participants can’t speak by default and must be manually granred permission by the host.
If a meeting participant’s Meet version doesn’t support audio/video locking, using the feature as a host will instead kick those people out of the room, and they won’t be able to re-enter until the lock’s turned off. That setting will also apply to breakout rooms as well.
The feature will be available for users on Android 6.0 and up using the latest version of either Meet or Gmail. It should also be available on the web version, too. It’s currently rolling out to all Google Workspace users and might take up to 15 days for it to show up for everyone. If you want to better your chances, make sure your Meet app is up to date on the Google Play Store.
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