Google Meet on desktop gains face touch-up filters

Image: Google

Google Meet's desktop app now has face touch-up filters, letting you slightly adjust your appearance before meetings. This feature, available on mobile since last year, offers two filters: subtle (light smoothing, under-eye lightening) and smoothing (more intense version). Unlike some video apps, Google focuses on natural-looking enhancements.

To enable it, navigate to "Apply visual effects" > "Appearance" in Google Meet. Here, you can turn on "Portrait touch-up" and choose a filter. It is available globally. However, it's only for these specific Google accounts: Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus Education Plus Teaching & Learning Upgrade, Google One, and Google Workspace Individual clients.

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Google Meet update can automatically frame your video

Source: Google

If you want to ensure you're not off-centre in your next Google Meet session, the app has an update for you. That is if you are a Google Workspace Business, Enterprise, Education, and Google One subscriber with a 2TB or more account. (You can check out the complete list here.) Before you join a session, the app can automatically frame your video to put you at the centre. But you can also manually reframe the video at any time from the settings. This feature is disabled by default. It's coming to Rapid Release domains first right now, then to Scheduled Release domains starting November 2.

Google Meet adds more shared experiences, multi-pinning

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Google Meet's latest update brings a few useful features, including more live-sharing features and a way to stay focused on group calls. The app will now let you co-watch YouTube videos and play classic games (like UNO!™ Mobile, Kahoot!, or Heads Up!) with up to 100 friends and family members simultaneously. This feature is coming to both Android phones and tablets.

And if you're in a meeting where you need to pay attention to specific people, Google Meet now supports multi-pinning. As the name suggests, you can pin specific users so they stay at the top of your screen.

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Google begins Meet and Duo merger

Source: Google

Google has officially begun merging its two video chat apps into one. So, if you're seeing two Google Meet apps, you're not hallucinating. The company announced this merger in June. It plans to keep the Meet brand name while bringing the best code bases into the Google Duo app. According to Wired, we'll start seeing Duo's app and website branding swap over to Google Meet this week. As with other typical rollouts, it might come your way later than others. But Google expects to complete the rebrand by September.

For now, you will be seeing two apps labelled "Google Meet (original): The updated Meet app" and "Google Meet: The updated Duo app." Google will eventually put out the original app to pasture, but it's sticking around for now until Google develops the meeting feature on top of Google Duo.