Google Meet is finally adding waiting rooms to give you something to do before your meeting starts

• Google Meet is adding waiting rooms for calls
• Hosts can admit participants, or kick them back out into rooms
• Only certain Business, Enterprise, Education and Workspace users get support

Google is finally adding waiting rooms to its video conferencing software in a bid to give hosts more control over who enters meetings and when.

With the new feature, Google Meet participants will be placed into a waiting room before they can join the call to prevent interruptions, and to give the host more time to set up the call with tools like screen sharing and recording.

Those joining via the waiting room will see a confirmation message to let them know they’re in the right place to save confusion.

Waiting rooms come to Google Meet

Google explained hosts can enable or disable waiting rooms before the meeting starts, so smaller catch-ups can proceed straight to the main ‘room’.

Hosts and co-hosts will be able to admit or deny participants, send one-way announcements such as information of delays, and move main room participants back to the waiting room when needed.

Being a business-centric feature, it’s no surprise that this will not be coming to individual account holders.

Business Standard/Plus, Enterprise Standard/Plus/Essentials/Essentials Plus, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning add-on and Workspace Individual subscribers will be eligible for the waiting room addition.

Though this may be big news for Google Workspace customers, it’s a feature that’s been missing for a long time. Zoom already has the ‘waiting room’ since 2020, when the platform saw huge pandemic-induced successes, and Teams already has the ‘lobby’.

Further improving Meet, Google is now bringing Ask Gemini in Meet to Enterprise Standard and Plus users. A sidebar panel uses AI to summarize ongoing discussions, identify takeaways and action items, and catch users up if they joined late.

Earlier this month, the company also added “AI-powered makeup” to make sure that participants are looking their best with zero effort.

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