Google Meet now shows you how noisy your office is
Taking calls and attending video conferences from noisy locations is never ideal — whether you’re outside near a construction site or a cubicle away from a co-worker who’s typing on a keyboard with obnoxiously loud switches — but unidirectional headset mics and dynamic noise-canceling algorithms built into video conferencing tools make life easier. The latter is whereGoogle Meetcomes in as itsambient noise suppressiondoes a pretty good job of blocking out the noise. With a new feature, however, you’ll know when exactly it’s doing the hard work.
The company has revealed in a post on theGoogle Workspace bloga new visual indicator for when Meet has activated noise reduction.
If you enable noise cancellation, the indicator has three different states: if the voice indicator isn’t visible, your mic isn’t picking up any sound; if you see a “Reducing noise” pop-up slide out from the voice indicator, Google Meet is filtering out a burst of noise, so the participants only hear your voice — this pop-up should appear just once per meeting, at most; lastly, if you see a pulsating ring around the indicator, it means Meet is actively canceling out ambient noise. Here, the size of the ring indicates the noise level.
The new noise indicator will be visible only when you have noise cancellation enabled. Google is already rolling out the feature, and it should be visible to all eligible users by the end of August. Google Meet’s noise indicator will not be available for people with personal Google accounts and low-tier Google Workspace and Business accounts. It is exclusive to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Workspace Individual, and Workspace Enterprise customers.
Another recent addition specifically for Meet users in certain Google Workspace organizationsenhances background-foreground separationwhen using blur effects and video backgrounds.
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This article is sponsored by Total Wireless.
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