You have several options for starting a meeting. Start a quick impromptu video chat now, schedule an event for later, or schedule an event and put it on people's calendars.
To share the meeting details for a future meeting, copy the meeting link and share with participants.
To directly start the meeting with this link, paste the link into a browser; or enter the link into the “Enter a code or link” field click Join.
Start an instant meeting: Create a new meeting and join the meeting directly.
Schedule in Google Calendar: To schedule a meeting, you’re directed to Google Calendar.
Tip: Google Workspace Essentials users can't schedule a meeting in Google Calendar.
Schedule a video meeting from Calendar
When you create an event on Google Calendar, you can add a video meeting link.
Google Workspace users: You can also add a dial-in number to the Calendar event.
Google Workspace Essentials users: You can't schedule a meeting in Google Calendar.
Important: Guests can forward the meeting link to other people. If someone tries to join who was not invited to the Calendar event, a meeting participant from your organization must accept their request. For meetings organized by a personal Google Account, only the meeting creator can admit these participants.
Enter the names or email of the people you want to invite.
Click Save.
To notify guests, click Send.
Check your equipment and setup
Make sure Meet is using the correct camera, microphone, and speakers. Check your video and audio settings and options. If your organization has Google Workspace with Gemini, you can use studio look, sound, and lighting to enhance your video and audio quality automatically.
Video—Sit in a well-lit area, ideally with light on your face and not behind, to avoid creating a silhouette.
Audio—Consider wearing headphones or earbuds for better audio. You can also use your phone to speak and listen if you’re on the move or your connection is poor. Do a quick sound check before you start a meeting and learn how to mute yourself and others. You can even switch audio devices during a meeting.
To help improve your Google Meet video quality, studio look uses artificial intelligence to fix issues caused by low light or low quality webcams. This process automatically happens in the cloud to enhance video quality without any impact to device performance.
In the green room before you join or during the meeting, navigate to the Effects panel.
In the green room, click Apply visual effects on the bottom right of your self view. During a meeting, hover over your self view and click in the center.
Alternatively click More options Apply visual effects.
Under “Appearance,” turn on "Studio look."
Turn on studio lighting
Important: In order to view and use this feature, you must have a processor that is equivalent or more performant than Intel Core i9-9880H (8C/16T), Intel Core i5-1235U (2P8E/12T), AMD Ryzen 5 5500U (6C/12T), and Apple M1 (4P4E/8T).
Studio lighting can be used to simulate studio-quality lighting. You’ll be able to adjust the lighting position, brightness, and color to look your best.
In the green room before you join or during the meeting, navigate to the Effects panel .
Click More options Settings .
In the green room, Click on the bottom right of your self view. During a meeting, hover over your self view and click in the center.
Alternatively click More options Apply Visual Effects.
Under “Appearance,” turn on "Studio lighting."
To have Google Meet automatically brighten your self view, select Auto.
To customize your lighting sources, select Custom .
The light intensity can be adjusted using the slider from the panel.
The light color can be changed from the panel by selecting the different colored circles.
The light position can be changed by dragging the Light 1 and Light 2 circles in your self view.
Turn on studio sound
Studio sound will automatically improve poor audio quality from typical bluetooth headsets and dial-in participants by using AI to recreate higher audio frequencies. Currently, this feature is available for meetings on the computer and dialing-in into a meeting by phone.
In order to use studio sound, you must meet all device requirements for Noise cancellation. Studio sound is automatically applied when noise cancellation is enabled.
On your computer, join a meeting with 2 or more computers in the same space.
If your audio is automatically merged with other devices, you’ll get a pop-up that says “To avoid feedback, your audio is merged with other devices nearby.”
If you are asked to manually confirm, click Merge mic & speakers.
When your audio is shared, you’ll see the Adaptive audio mic appear on the top left corner.
To be heard well, keep your microphone unmuted.
Users with merged audio are grouped together in their tiles and highlighted collectively when someone speaks.
You can use this feature only if your organization supports it. For help, contact your administrator.
To help limit distractions or make meetings more fun, you can blur your background or use filters and custom images. If your organization has Google Workspace with Gemini, you can also generate custom backgrounds in Meet.
At the bottom right of your self view, click Apply visual effects Generate a background .
Enter a prompt. For example:
"Luxurious living room interior"
"A magical sunny forest glade" Tip: For better results, try including reference to a style or mood, a setting, and objects in the environment. For example: "A cozy coffee shop with flowers."
(Optional) You can select a style to customize the background image you create.
Click Create samples to see several suggested background images.
(Optional) After you click Create samples, you can:
Edit your prompt: At the top of the panel on the right, click the prompt. Edit your prompt and click Create other samples.
See more suggested background images: Click Create other samples.
Click one of the generated images to use as your background in your meeting.
Click Close to exit "Generate a background" setup.
On the bottom, click More options Apply visual effects Generate a background .
Enter a prompt. For example:
"Luxurious living room interior"
"A magical sunny forest glade" Tip: For better results, try including reference to a style or mood, a setting, and objects in the environment. For example: "A cozy coffee shop with flowers."
(Optional) You can select a style to customize the background image you create.
Click Create samples to see several suggested background images.
(Optional) After you click Create samples, you can:
Edit your prompt: At the top of the panel on the right, click the prompt. Edit your prompt and click Create other samples.
See more suggested background images: Click Create other samples.
Click one of the generated images to use as your background in your meeting.
Click Close to exit "Generate a background" setup.
Give feedback on generated background images
Gemini for Google Workspace is constantly learning and may not be able to support your request.
If you get an inaccurate or unsafe suggestion, you can submit feedback to us.
Hover over the desired image.
On the bottom of the image, click Good suggestion or Bad suggestion .
If you click Bad suggestion , you can select the issue you found and enter additional feedback.
When you need to present to a large audience, use Calendar or Meet to create a live-stream event. Up to 250 participants can attend. Or, you can add up to 100,000 view-only guests. You can’t see or hear view-only guests in the meeting, and they can’t present, record, or control streaming.
Add the event details, such as date, time, and description.
Add the guests that can fully participate in the video meeting.
All guests added to this event can be seen, heard, and present their screen.
People from other organizations and trusted domains can be added. Only people in your organization can record and control streaming.
Next to Join with Google Meet, click the Down arrow Add live stream.
Click SaveSend. Note: Streaming does not automatically start. During the meeting, at the bottom right, click Meeting tools Live StreamingStart streaming.
If some people can't attend the live meeting, record the meeting for them to play back later. As a best practice, before your video meeting starts, inform participants that you’ll record the meeting. You can add a note to the Calendar invite or announce it before you start recording.
In a video meeting, at the bottom, click Activities RecordingStart recordingStart.
If needed, go to Can't find the recording button.
Wait for the recording to start.
Other participants are notified when the recording starts or stops.
Click Stop recording when you finish.
The recording also stops when everyone leaves the meeting.
Click Stop recording again to confirm.
When the recording file is ready, it’s saved to the meeting organizer’s My Drive in the Meet Recordings folder. An email with the recording link is also sent to the meeting organizer and the person who started the recording.
If your organization has Google Workspace with Gemini, you can have Gemini take meeting notes for you. Notes are automatically organized in Google Docs that you can share with your team.
At the top right of your screen, click Take notes with Gemini.
Click Start taking notes.
Meeting notes are added to a new doc and shared with people on the calendar invite that are within your organization.
Manually refresh “Summary so far.”
Stop and restart taking notes: All meeting participants internal to the organization can stop taking notes at any time. You can ensure that any confidential or sensitive discussions aren't part of the meeting summary.
When host controls are enabled for the meeting, only the host and co-hosts can start and stop taking notes.
You can turn captions on for your device to view subtitles as everyone speaks during a video meeting. If your organization has Google Workspace with Gemini, captions can be translated into a different language in real time.
Under “Customize your captions,” choose your preferred settings:
Font
Font size
Font color
Background color
Click Close .
Tip: Your settings are automatically saved.
View past translated captions
If translated captions are turned on, you can review the translated captions of the previous parts of a conversation.
You can scroll up or down to review the translated captions. Translated captions only display for the parts of the conversation where you’re in the meeting and have captions turned on.
Meeting organizers with Google Workspace for Education can prevent participants from sharing their screen.
If you're in an office meeting room—Present from your laptop using Companion mode. Your microphone is off in Companion mode to reduce the risk of echo from your laptop. Learn more about Companion mode.
Present your entire screen—Choose Your entire screen to show your browser, plus any tabs you have open. You might see an “infinite mirror” if you click Entire screen. To prevent this effect, try presenting from a single tab.
If you work with more than one screen—Choose A window and select the screen that you want to show.
To hide sensitive information on your screen only show one Chrome Browser tab—Choose A tab. Images and videos are high-definition (HD) if you use Chrome Browser, making slides with embedded visuals easier to view.
Tip: If you're not using Chrome Browser (which automatically hides any pop-up notifications), mute or turn off notifications so they don’t appear when you’re presenting.
Select the scheduled meeting, or click Join or start a Meeting.
Enter a meeting code.
Click Present.
Select a window or application.
Select Share.
Present to a video meeting using your mobile camera
With the Meet app, you can reverse the camera on your mobile device during a video meeting. For example, you might want to show a whiteboard or notes in the room you're in.
When you’re in a video meeting, Meet automatically switches the layout to display the most active content and participants. You can also choose a different screen layout. For example, if a lot of people are sharing ideas, you might want to use the tiled option so you can see as many participants as possible. When you or others are presenting, you can unpin shared content to see more people in the grid.
Auto (dynamic) : This default layout maximizes available space and focuses on what’s most important. This layout allows for portrait tiles, where the backgrounds of participants might be automatically cropped out. It adapts your view and tile size in Meet based on the:
Size of your browser window
Number of participants in the call
Presence of active presentation
Tiled (legacy): This view shows users in a fixed grid without portrait cropping. It doesn’t use screen space as efficiently as “Auto (dynamic),” but is less likely to crop anyone out of view. If there’s no active presentation, it can show up to 49 people at the same time. By default, you find 16 tiles on your screen.
At the bottom, move the slider to the number of tiles you want to see on your screen. The number of tiles you choose becomes the default for future meetings until you change it. In some cases, you might see a message that your selection is not saved, this can be due to performance limitations on your computer’s processor.
Spotlight: The active speaker or shared screen fills the entire window.
Sidebar: The main image is the active speaker or shared screen. You’ll see thumbnails of additional participants on the side.
Optional: You can hide participants who turn off their video. This doesn’t affect how their screens look. To hide non-video tiles:
Use watermarks to protect the confidentiality of the visual content you share in a meeting and help trace unauthorized copies of video and screen shares.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen click Hand raise .
Lower your hand
Scroll to the bottom of the screen click Lower hand .
Conduct a poll to capture people’s attention
Whether it’s identifying topics that need more discussion or testing comprehension, polls in Meet are a great way to break the ice in a video meeting. If you’re the meeting moderator, join the meeting a few minutes early and set up poll questions to gather reactions and engage the group throughout the meeting.
In a meeting, at the bottom right, click Activities click Polls.
Click Start a poll.
Enter a question and add options for the poll.
Tip: You can let users respond anonymously to Polls. Before you save or launch your poll, turn on Responses appear without names .
Choose one:
To post your poll, click Launch.
To save your poll so you can launch it later, click Save.
Tip: Polls you save remain listed under Polls for the duration of the meeting. After the call ends, all polls are permanently deleted. Meeting moderators are emailed a polling report at the end of the meeting.
After a poll is launched, to vote on your own poll, select one of the optionsclick Vote.
Submit a response for a poll (for meeting participants)
In a meeting, at the bottom right, click Activities click Polls.
In the poll, select your response click Vote. Tip: After you click Vote, you can’t change your response.
If you’re a meeting moderator, you can use breakout rooms to divide participants into smaller groups during video meetings in Meet. Participants can then easily rejoin the original meeting after their smaller group discussion.
During a video meeting, you can use Q&A in Meet so participants can submit and upvote questions without disrupting the flow of the meeting or an important presentation. If you’re the meeting moderator, you’ll get a detailed report of all the questions and responses.
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On this page
click Join.
Settings 
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the setting you want to change:
on the bottom right of your self view. During a meeting, hover over your self view and click 
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appear on the top left corner.
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to exit "Generate a background" setup.
or Bad suggestion 
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Recording
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or Turn off captions 
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: This default layout maximizes available space and focuses on what’s most important. This layout allows for portrait tiles, where the backgrounds of participants might be automatically cropped out. It adapts your view and tile size in Meet based on the:
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click Polls.
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to mix the groups.
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Breakout rooms.
to randomly mix up the groups.
click Questions.
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