Keep yourself centered at all times
Google is committed to adding features to Meet as it slowly merges the platform with its one-on-one video calling app, Google Duo. After all, it’s one of the most widely used videoconferencing apps out there both for work and school purposes. For one, Meet has given multiple co-hosts new features to make calls easier. Now, it wants to keep you center-stage at all times with a new auto-framing feature for calls in order to make you more visible to other attendants.
As announced by Google during its Cloud Next ’22 event and further explained in a blog post, the company will be rolling out a new auto-framing feature over the coming days for business users. Whenever you’re in a video conference and you look off-center on your camera, Google Meet will automatically re-frame your video feed so that you look centered.
The automatic framing will only happen once during the call, so the camera won’t be following you around constantly or re-framing on its own much unlike Apple’s Center Stage feature — Google says that this is to avoid any other distractions from taking the camera’s focus away from you. You will, however, be able to manually reframe your video at any time during the call by going into your settings.
The feature has started rolling out and will continue to do so for the next month, depending on if you’re on a Rapid Release or Scheduled Release domain. Those who are on most Google Workspace Business, Education, and Enterprise plans are eligible for the feature — the exceptions being Workplace Essentials, Business Starter, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits as well as legacy G Suite customers and, of course, normal users. The odd exception to the expected exception is that Google One subscribers on a plan with 2TB or more storage will have access to auto-framing — go figure.
Once it’s rolled out, the feature will be turned off by default — you’ll need to enable it manually whenever it does land for you.
This can be a neat addition to your next work video call, so if you have an eligible account, definitely keep an eye out for it.
