If you’ve ever been used one of the best video chat apps while trying to do something else, you may know the pain of having to tactically pick which windows to have open. Even if you’ve got multiple screens and windows, you may still have to choose between the video feed and an important piece of work. Thankfully Google Meet could soon put a stop to that.
If you’ve ever used Google Meet on Android, you will know there’s a picture-in-picture (PiP) mode that lets you carry on using your phone without cutting off your view of whoever is talking. And now Google is bringing that feature to Google Chrome, offering that same PiP functionality on desktop.
The good news is that, according to Google’s announcement blog post, the picture-in-picture feature will activate automatically whenever you switch tabs. Meaning you don’t have to go through the motions of deliberately opening up Google Meet’s PiP mode yourself.
Android Police notes that the option to manually open Google Meet in PiP mode was already available, but this new change should make it completely seamless. However, since this feature is exclusive to Google Chrome, opening up any other software windows will cause that pop-up meeting window to vanish.
This feature will be rolling out to all Google accounts, and any of you with a Google Workspace account won’t need to worry about administrators enabling or restricting the option. However people will have the option to switch the feature for their individual account, if they so wish. Simply turn off the Automatic picture-in-picture toggle in the Chrome site settings.
The feature is already rolling out, and you may find that your next Google Meet call on desktop has picture in picture already switched on. If not, you can continue using existing methods, even if they aren’t nearly as convenient.
