Google gives Meet some overdue attention with fresh interface and lots of new features

Yesterday’s Made by Google event was nothing short of a marathon, as the company shared feature after feature, app after app, and a whole slew of new Pixel 9 and Pixel Watch hardware. After letting loose that firehose of announcements, how could there be anything left? Believe it or not, the action’s not stopping now, and today we get word of some big changes coming to Google Meet video calls.

For starters, Google is overhauling the app’s interface, freshening things up with a new layout. The company’s trying to make things feel more consistent across the software, and is updating the video call experience to be more like what you’re used to for meetings. Google undersells that quite a bit in its announcement, but as 9to5Google points out, this is a pretty significant step towards smoothing over some of the inconsistences that have lingered since the Duo merger years ago.

The call interface is adding functional improvements, like the ability to quickly pull up a chat window for sharing links. And new emoji reaction tools in group calls will let you quickly express yourself without interrupting anyone else.

You also get the opportunity to try out a new look on your end, as you’ll now be able to stack effects like custom backgrounds or video filters, applying more than one at once. Sometimes you can’t even show yourself at all — maybe if you’re in the middle of a commute — so Meet is extending its audio-only “on-the-go” mode that was previously available for meetings. And when you have more to share than normal, Meet is gaining the ability to share your screen to everyone you’re on a call with.

Beyond all that, Google is also making it easy to switch devices mid-call, giving you access live captions in over 70 languages, and more. With so many updates incoming, it’s understandable that Google needs a little time to roll these out, and the company advises that we’re likely to see them start trickling in over the next few months.