In a world where video conferencing apps have become household names and AI translation is available at the push of a button, it's strange to realize that the two still haven't been joined at the hip. Not everywhere, and not for everyone, at the very least.

Well, Google has confirmed it will be expanding the real-time translation tools on Google Meet. Up until now, this feature has been limited to desktop machines and limited groups of business users. But now the new expansion will see it come to Android and iOS devices "in the coming months", as well as even more desktop users.

The downside? Translation is still going to come with some serious restrictions. For starters, it's still limited to select business and education users, alongside people with valid Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions. The latter two are available to the masses, but cost $20 and $250 a month, respectively.

But unfortunately, there's more getting in your way than having the right kind of Google account. Google says that Workspace users will get "promotional access to higher usage limits of speech translation for at least 60 days." There will be daily usage limits after that, but Google isn't sharing details right now.

Real-time translation is always a good thing

Google Meet is far from the only video call app to offer real-time translation right now. Skype famously had translation for years, though the brand was never as popular as it should have been after it was bought out by Microsoft. Likewise, the fact that it got merged into Teams — the video calling app equivalent of single ply toilet paper — pretty much killed the chance it had to be used by the wider public regularly.

Zoom is also capable of translating to captions in real-time. So while you're not hearing what someone is saying, you do get subtitles instead. It's like watching a foreign film, but without having to keep track of all the action on screen.

On top of that, there are plenty of other smaller-name apps that promise real translation, particularly with the aid of AI. That said, without the brand recognition of the big-name video calling apps, they have an uphill battle actually getting people to use them.

So having real-time audio translation in another mainstream app, and one that's freely available, can only be a good thing. There may be restrictions for the time being, but I suspect it won't be very long before Google starts rolling this out to regular Google account holders. Or, at the very least, those with the cheapest Gemini AI Plus plan, which costs just $8 a month.

Here's just hoping the mobile version works better than the built-in translation apps — which don't work so well with real-time conversations.

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The Insta360 Link 2 Pro might be the best webcam you can get, with impressive 4K image quality, solid audio, advanced smart features and tracking that will keep you the center of attention at all times. The two-axis gimbal, fast autofocus and subject tracking make it a great choice for office workers or lecturers. I also appreciate the smart gesture controls that streamline setting up presentation modes.

It’s a little on the expensive side, especially if you don’t need these features to enhance your workflow, but otherwise ticks all the boxes of a great webcam.

To find out whether this is the webcam for you, keep reading my full Insta360 Link 2 Pro review.

Insta360 Link 2 Pro review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A professional 4K/30 fps webcam with smart features and effective gimbal tracking
• Who is it for? Professional presenters and office workers who need a great quality camera for conference calls
• What does it cost? The Insta360 Link 2 Pro is available for $249 from Insta360, $240 from Amazon U.S., and £239 from Amazon U.K.
• What do we like? It’s an all-rounder with great picture quality, a solid microphone, plus effective autofocus and tracking
• What don’t we like? It’s on the expensive side

Insta360 Link 2 Pro review: Specs

Insta360 Link 2 Pro review: The ups

There’s a lot to love about the Insta360 Link 2 Pro. From great audio performance to perfect picture quality and auto-tracking capabilities. In my opinion, it’s an ideal addition to any home office, workplace or classroom.

Image performance

I looked incredibly clear when using the Insta360 Link 2 Pro, and the image was far sharper than when I use my usual MacBook Air M2’s built-in camera. With a maximum landscape and portrait resolution of 4K, which is an Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) resolution, it showed my face in pretty scary detail, although it records with the same image quality as the previous Link 2 model.

The frame rate of the webcam is also impressive. With a max of 30 frames per second (fps), my movements appear completely smooth on screen.

In the True Focus Mode, the camera also blurs the background slightly. This makes me stand out on the call, keeping me the centre of attention. I feel like this gives me a little more authority when speaking and certainly makes me feel a lot more confident.

Two-axis gimbal design

The two-axis gimbal on the Insta360 Link 2 Pro, combined with the subject detection, means that no matter where I set up the webcam, it moves itself to always keep me in frame. This is the same design that we saw in the previous Link 2 ($199) webcam, and also what keeps your camera stable when using gimbals like the DJI Osmo Pocket 3.

Tracking with the gimbal is super smooth, and the auto-framing settings work well. Even when I was moving around, it easily kept me in frame. But if you need to get a specific angle quickly, you can also adjust the camera by hand by pressing the button on the front of the webcam. It also uses Phase Detection Autofocus, so I was always in focus while testing.

There’s also a group framing setting, which means you can fit larger groups of people in the frame. This works by adjusting the zoom and camera angle to get as many people in frame as possible. You can see below, as we’re standing around, that the camera adjusts slightly as each of us moves.

The Obsbot Tiny 2 ($299) also offers great quality two-axis gimbal tracking. However, I think the Insta360 Link 2 Pro takes the cake, as it’s far more consistent.

Look at what I’m doing

The Insta360 Link 2 Pro is a presenter’s dream. It has smart commands that enable you to share your physical work without battling the camera angle. My favorite feature is the desk view, which angles the camera downward using the gimbal and adjusts the zoom to give the perfect top-down view of your desk.

As you can see from the sample video above, it was easy for me to demonstrate the contents of this photo book without struggling to hold it up. This is perfect for showcasing detailed notes during presentations, and it's a feature that I used on other webcams while in college — so I can attest to what a lifesaver it can be. My hands are slightly skewed, but this was much worse on the previous Link 2 model.

There’s also a whiteboard feature that can automatically detect a whiteboard surface and maintain framing on it, even if it moves around. I used the Link Connect software to scan the frame, but you can activate it using hand gestures, too. As you can see in this video, despite my shaky holding of the whiteboard, it stays in frame while I write.

Dual native ISO

As you can see from this image, I used the Insta360 Link 2 Pro in low-light conditions with light coming in from the window behind me. When using a much cheaper camera like the Logitech C270 ($29), this would normally result in an overexposed background, and my face would be completely in the dark. However, the Link 2 Pro does an excellent job of balancing the bright background with the dark foreground, so while there’s still a little grain, I was able to easily see my own face.

The 1/1.3-inch sensor has dual native ISO (where the camera switches between two native ISO ranges to get better results in extreme light or dark lighting), so you get more of a natural lighting experience. The camera works to balance quickly when moving from bright to dark conditions without severe grain, which makes the image feel extra noisy, so in darker conditions, the camera doesn’t need to digitally enhance the image.

You can hear me loud and clear

The audio performance on the Insta360 Link 2 Pro is great. I used the webcam for all of my video calls for a week, and my colleagues told me that my voice sounded clear — similar to what I sound like through the built-in microphone on my MacBook Air M2.

But what stood out to me is that they didn’t hear my friend speaking on her own call in the background. The beamforming microphones on the webcam help to isolate the sound coming from the speaker on the call. As you can hear in this recording, my voice is isolated from the other sounds in the office, like typing and quiet chatter.

There are also different microphone settings to choose from when using the Link Controller companion software. You can choose between Standard, which has subtle noise control, Original, which is totally unprocessed, Wide for capturing more voices or Focus for isolating a single voice. I used the webcam with the Focus setting since I’m usually in the office when I take calls, and I want my voice to be isolated.

Secure mount

The Insta360 Link 2 Pro’s mount is incredibly sturdy. It has to be since the webcam itself is pretty heavy at 5.9 ounces. In comparison, the Insta360 Link 2C ($149) is 3.9 ounces, and the Obsbot Meet 4K ($149) is just 2.5 ounces. The mount is flexible, and I was able to angle it to securely fit on my monitor and support the weight of the camera. But it also fits onto the screen of my laptop, which is a lot thinner.

Since the webcam attaches to the mount magnetically, there’s no fussing with threads to get everything attached, as I experienced with the Logitech MX BRIO 705 ($199). It’s just super simple.

Smart control gestures

There’s nothing worse than having to awkwardly change the settings of your camera during a call, and the smart gesture controls of the Insta360 Link 2 Pro eliminate that problem. You’re able to control the camera by making hand gestures, and I found this surprisingly easy.

You risk looking like you’re auditioning for a “Star Trek” revamp, but it takes all the fuss out of dealing with common settings. You can use these gestures to control the camera’s zoom, auto-tracking and whiteboard settings.

I found it best to activate the tracking when I wanted to move around. It also meant that when I was turning on the whiteboard mode, I didn’t need to use the Link Connect app.

Insta360 Link 2 Pro review: The downs

I’ll caveat by saying I’m being extremely picky here, because the Insta360 Link 2 Pro does everything I need it to do, and well. But I wish there had been some zoom improvement from the previous model. It’s also a little on the pricey side if you’ll only be using it for conference calls at your desk.

No zoom improvements

There haven’t been any improvements made to the digital zoom of the Insta360 Link 2 Pro over the Link 2. This won’t be an issue for anyone only using the webcam to hold meetings at their desk, but anyone using it for larger-scale presentations may find it annoying. If you’re using the camera to record a lecture, for example, you may want the webcam to be able to zoom in and track you from a distance.

This depends on your needs, and for me personally, 4x digital zoom is more than enough. But the lack of upgrade here from the camera’s predecessor is a bit of a letdown. For something better suited to conference rooms, the Logitech BRIO 4K Ultra HD webcam ($199) offers 5x digital zoom. I would have liked to see this kind of improvement to have some enhancement in presentation features.

On the pricey side

The Insta360 Link 2 Pro is $100 more expensive than its predecessor, the Insta360 Link 2. The Insta360 Link 2 Pro is available for $249 from the Insta360 official store or at Amazon. You could buy the previous iteration of the camera, as although there are tracking improvements with the newer model, the zoom, max resolution and focus system are the same.

Or if you don’t need the added gimbal, you could go for the Insta360 Link 2C Pro for ($199), which was released alongside the Link 2 Pro. Another great option is the Obsbot Meet 4K webcam ($149), which also features the same zoom and resolution specs. It has all of the same features sans gimbal, so it will be great for anyone who only needs to take calls from the comfort of their desk.

Insta360 Link 2 Pro review: Verdict

The Insta360 Link 2 Pro is an impressive webcam upgrade that offers everything you could need from your office presenting companion. The image quality is great, and I appeared clear in the camera at all times, even when auto-tracking was working. It has excellent autofocus, and when combined with the effective auto-tracking for individuals and groups, it helps you stay in frame at all times.

Its gesture controls are also very helpful if you don’t want to change settings on your computer, and using the presenting functions, like desk view and whiteboard, makes sharing work so much easier, and is a great addition for classrooms.

It’s a slightly expensive option if you only use your webcam to take calls from your desk, as you may not get full use from the smart features. But other than that, I can’t complain about this webcam. It does everything I need it to do and more, and makes taking calls so much easier.

At last month's Google I/O, Google announced that its Google Beam software, which brings 3D imagery to video meetings, was finally ready for prime time. All that was needed was the hardware to bring Google's 3D video technology out of demos and into actual meeting spaces.

HP provided that hardware today (June 11), announcing the HP Dimension with Google Beam, which it bills as a 3D video communication platform aimed at distributed workers. And it's a pretty impressive — and pricey — piece of hardware.

If you've been following Google's efforts to develop this technology, you know that Google Beam started life as Project Starline. It uses multiple cameras to capture the image of whoever's sitting in front of the meeting display before turning to a volumetric AI model to generate a 3D image of that person.

The end result is a video chat that feels more like you're talking to a person on the other side of a window rather than someone sitting in an entirely different room. And Google's betting that the sense of depth and presence will lead to more engaged meeting participants who maintain persistent eye contact with each other, read non-verbal cues, and generally interact like they would if everyone at the meeting were gathered in the same room. I've sat in a demo back during the Project Starline days, and I can vouch for how true-to-life the whole thing looks.

The HP Dimension with Google Beam will be what you'll need on either end of the conversation to provide the processing power needed to produce this convincing 3D imagery. The setup features six different cameras to handle video capture and a 65-inch 8K light field display to provide a true-to-life viewing experience. After all, it would diminish the 3D effect if the person speaking to you was shrunk down to the size of a laptop display.

Besides realistic video, the HP Dimension also promises an enhanced audio experience with full-fidelity spatial audio. The newly announced HP Poly Studio A2 Audio Bridge and Table Microphones pick up your voice.

A setup like that is going to cost a pretty penny — specifically, HP is charging $24,999 for the HP Dimension with Google Beam. That price doesn't include a Google Beam license, which is sold separately. The setup works natively with either Google Meet or Zoom, with HP hoping to add other meeting platforms over time.

At $24,999, you're unlikely to pick up an HP Dimension with Google Beam for your small business or home office. This is a setup HP is aiming at enterprise customers for use in conference and huddle rooms.

HP can point to studies that suggest that the expense is worth it for companies with a lot of remote workers. A survey HP conducted with knowledge workers who have far-flung colleagues found that 73% of the respondents wanted to feel a sense of connection with their co-workers. Certainly, having a conversation with something that isn't a flat 2D image on a tiny screen should help in that regard.

We'll find out soon enough once the HP Dimension with Google Beam starts shipping later this year. The setup will be available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, and Japan initially, with plans to reach more markets later on.

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Last year at Google I/O, I got the chance to try out Project Starline, a video conferencing tool that brings 3D depth to your video chat sessions. Using both AI, 3D imagining and other equipment, Google turns the person on the other end of the line into a 3D image with depth and presence — it's more like talking to a person on the other side of a window than in a flat panel from the other side of the world.

I found Project Starline to be pretty impressive during my brief demo a year ago, even if I thought there were a few things Google would need to iron out if it was to make its goal of having a commercial product ready by 2025.

Apparently, Google believes it's ironed those things out. At Google I/O 2025 today (May 20), the company announced that Project Starline is becoming a new product called Google Beam. And even more significantly, Google Beam-ready devices are on the way.

Google Beam: What you need to know

The name be changing but the idea behind Google Beam is not all that different from Project Starline. You sit in front of a device with a light field display equipped with cameras — back in my demo, it was three sets of dual cameras on the sides and top of the monitor — to capture your image. An AI volumetric video model developed by Google than turns your 2D image into a 3D one.

It's a pretty effective visual illusion, like a magic mirror come to life. The person on the other end of the call no longer looks flat, but rather like you could reach out and touch them. (I wouldn't advise it, though — it kind of ruins the illusion that you're just talking to a version on the other side of a window.)

There's more than just a visual parlor trick at play here. Google argues that talking to a 3D recreation of a person lends them a more realistic air. You're more likely to make eye contact and stay engaged than you would be with a flat image that's competing for attention with other open widows on your display. And with 3D, you're more likely to pick up on non-verbal cues like you would if you were talking to someone in the same room — or so Google argues at any rate.

My demo from a year ago didn't last long enough to see if my attention wandered over the course of a longer video chat session. But Google's on to something when it maintains that a 3D video call lends a sense of presence that's not there in the current iteration of chat options like Google Meet.

Google Beam has picked up one new trick since last year. The real-time translation features that Google is adding to Google Meet — another I/O 2025 announcement — will also be supported in Google Beam. That means when you have a conversation with another person, both participants can speak in their native language; the regular audio ducks down in favor of an AI-powered translator who converts what's being said on the fly.

Initially, the real-time translation feature in Google Meet — and presumably Google Beam — will work with English and Spanish, though Google says other languages are coming, too.

Google Beam: What's next

Google Beam may have its new name and Google's confidence that it's ready for prime time. But there are other pieces of the video conferencing puzzle that need to fall into place. Namely, we need hardware that supports the 3D technology Google is pushing.

And that's where HP comes in. The company emerged as a Project Starline partner last year, pledging to work with Google to develop products that would be ready in 2025. We're about to find out exactly what those products will be, as Google says HP will be showing off Google Beam-ready devices at the InfoComm 2025 Pro AV trade show next month in Florida.

Google says it's also working with Zoom and HP to bring Google Beam to enterprises. It's also bringing the technology to businesses and organizations through various channel partners.

Google Beam is one of the many announcements Google is making at its Google I/O 2025 keynote today, with much of the event's focus on the role AI is playing with the company's products and initiatives. Follow our Google I/O live blog for the latest from Google, including the possibility of another hands-on session with Google Beam if that opportunity presents itself.

Updated on May 23 to note Zoom's involvement with Google Beam.

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After more than 20 years, the video calling service that started it all is finally retiring in May as Microsoft plans to replace Skype with Teams once and for all.

First released back in 2003, Skype was created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis along with a small team of Estonian developers. Then, just two years later, the company was bought by eBay for $2.6 billion before Microsoft snapped it up for $8.5 billion in 2011.

The move made a lot of sense at the time, as Microsoft used the newly acquired company to replace Windows Live Messenger. Even with competition from Apple’s FaceTime which launched in 2010, Skype remained the video calling and instant messaging service to beat until Zoom took the world by storm in 2020.

Now though, according to a blog post from Microsoft, all of Skype’s remaining users have until May 5, 2025 to move to Microsoft Teams. Fortunately, you can use your existing Skype credentials to login into the free version of Teams, where all of your chats and contacts will appear automatically. For those not interested in moving to Teams, they will be able to export all of their Skype data including their chats, contacts and call history.

I’m not at all surprised by the move on Microsoft’s part but Skype truly was a game changer. In fact, it was the reason I bought my first webcam and the service helped me stay connected to friends and family while I was living abroad, even when the internet connection on either end wasn’t good enough to actually make a video call.

Here’s why I’m sad to see Skype go even though it’s probably time, along with why I won’t be making the switch to Microsoft Teams myself.

Not just for video calls

I’m sure when you think of Skype, video calls and the service’s iconic hang-up sound are the first things that come to mind, but it was actually capable of a whole lot more. From instant messaging to transferring files, there was a lot you could do from Skype. But the most useful feature for me was its ability to call landlines and mobile phones.

If you ever traveled abroad or lived in another country for an extended period before smartphones became ubiquitous, you know just how hard it used to be to phone home. Sure, you could do a Skype-to-Skype audio call, but what if the other person wasn’t at their computer or didn’t have a smartphone? This is where SkypeOut which was later simplified to “Calls to mobiles and landlines” came in handy.

During most of the 2010s, I lived and worked abroad in South Korea before moving later back to the U.S. It was hard enough getting my Korean smartphone set up, and adding an international calling plan would have cost me a fortune. Thankfully, with Skype Credit, I could add money to my Skype account and make calls to landlines and cell phones until my credit ran out.

One neat feature that the service had was the ability to add Caller ID. Just like when I make the odd call on one of the best smart speakers now, having your name show up instead of a random number is a great way to ensure that the person on the other end actually picks up.

With Skype’s final closure a little more than two months away, I decided to pull up Skype for the Web one last time to see if I still had any Skype Credit left. Then it dawned on me that Skype Credit expires after 180 days of inactivity, and the last time I used the service was in 2019. Still, if you look in the top left corner next to my username, you can see that my balance looks like “₩0” as it’s still set to South Korean Won.

Keeping work and play separate

Moving all of Skype’s remaining user base over to Teams makes the most sense logistically and financially for Microsoft but I personally don’t think a lot of people will make this switch on their own.

If you use Microsoft Teams at work, it’s likely the last service you want to open up at the end of the day to reconnect with friends and family. Don’t get me wrong, Teams has come a long way since it first became available back in 2017.

During the pandemic, it almost felt like there was a video call arms race going on between Microsoft and Zoom, where one service would add a new feature like virtual backgrounds or background blurring and the other would rush to put out their own version of said feature as quickly as possible.

Another big battle between the two and Google Meet at the time was how many people you could have on a video call simultaneously. This has all settled down now, though, and whether you’re using Teams, Zoom or Meet, the maximum number of people that can participate in a free video call is 100 for all three services.

I use Slack as my workplace chat app of choice and while I do have another workspace besides my main one, I rarely use it. I could see the same thing happening with those who use Teams for work but end up migrating their Skype accounts over to it.

It’s a logical choice on Microsoft’s part but I don’t think existing Teams users are going to suddenly start using the same service for their work and personal lives. Now with Skype users that haven’t used Teams before, it could be a completely different story.

You don’t always want to be first

Skype was revolutionary for its time, but the problem with being the first to market is that somebody else is likely going to come, innovate on your original idea and end up surpassing you.

From Blockbuster and Netflix to MySpace and Facebook, we’ve seen this play out countless times in the tech world. Even Skype itself ended up replacing Windows Live Messenger. It didn’t have to be this way, though.

I really think if Microsoft had made the push with Skype that it did with Teams earlier on in the pandemic, Zoom wouldn't have swooped in and emerged as the new face of video conferencing. Teams is great in its own right, and the people I know who use it for work — like my wife — absolutely love it. At the same time, a lot of people have moved on to using WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other apps they already use for chatting with their friends for video calls.

Skype outlook

The death of Skype doesn’t quite sting like Flash being discontinued or, for me personally, Google discontinuing Inbox, but I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the video calling service that was my lifeline back home when living abroad all those years ago.

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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.

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Years of video conferencing have taken much of the wonder out of face-to-face conversations with people from other parts of the globe for me. But just a few minutes using Project Starline, Google's 3D video conferencing tool, made me appreciate how technology can break down distance between people. 

And that's a realization that may soon dawn on other potential users, as Project Starline is closer than ever to making the jump out of the experimental stage and becoming an actual product potentially used in conference rooms around the world.

During Google I/O 2024 this week, Google and HP announced that they were teaming up to turn Starline from an impressive demo that blends AI, 3D imaging and other technologies into an actual product that people can buy. The target is to have something ready by 2025.

With that timeframe in mind, my first-ever demo with Project Starline during Google I/O couldn't have come at a more opportune time. Though Google first announced its work on Starline back in 2021, this was my first chance to see the technology in person. And yes, it is a pretty impressive experience.

Project Starline: What it's like

Thanks to the global pandemic and the lockdown of a few years ago, we should all be very familiar with the current video conferencing experience. You're staring at a flat image of someone in a far away conference room beamed to you on a laptop screen or, if you're lucky, a larger monitor. Even then, it's easy for your focus to wander, and to not be sure if you should be staring at the screen, into your webcam or at miniature image of yourself to make sure there's nothing stuck in your teeth.

Starline does away with all that. It essentially turns that monitor into a magic window, as if the person you're conferencing with is right there on the other side. There's a depth to not only their face but to the background behind them. It's almost to the point where you can reach out and touch them. (Though I wouldn't — the Google employee I was conferencing with in my demo and I attempted a virtual high-five, and it definitely killed the "you are there" illusion.)

Had I experienced Starline a few years earlier, there would have been a lot more equipment in the room, but Google has managed to shrink things down. Now, there were just three sets of dual cameras set up on the sides and top of the monitor, suggesting that the commercialized version of Starline is not going to require a lot of equipment.

You don't get a flawless image. In my conversation, I noticed some flickering around the edges of the person I was talking, particularly around their neck. It wasn't particularly distracting — in fact it made the experience feel more like those holograms you see in movies. It certainly seems a more natural way of communicating than those 3D avatars that Apple's Vision Pro headset uses.

And making things feel natural seems like much of the point to Project Starline. Certainly, I found myself making eye contact with the person on the other end of the conversation, without my attention wandering off to other parts of the room. Granted, this was a brief demo and not an hour-long meeting, so it would be interesting to see if that attention holds with a longer Starline session.

Still, Starline impresses, even if I only experienced it in a small dose. I liked the way the person I was conversing with seemed to pop out of the screen. When they extended their arm, it seemed to come right out of the frame — as if they were talking to me through a window like Google describes. It's also quite enjoyable to experience 3D without having to don any extra gear — no glasses and certainly no $3,499 headset.

Project Starline outlook

We should start to find out next year when the Google-HP partnership brings the Starline-inspired hardware to market. And Google says that whatever product emerges will work with existing video conferencing services, such as Google Meet and Zoom.

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Regardless of whether you spend top dollar on one of the best laptops or decide to play it safe with one of the best budget laptops, either way, your new laptop is going to have a built-in webcam.

While you would think spending more for a premium laptop like the new MacBook Air M3 or the Dell XPS 15 OLED would get you a much better one than you’d find on a budget laptop, unfortunately this isn’t usually the case. Laptops keep getting thinner and more powerful but their webcams just don’t get the same attention that the chips powering them do when it comes to upgrades.

I mainly use a desktop PC throughout my workday but there are times when even I need to switch to a laptop. Besides missing the extra screen space provided by my trusty ultrawide monitor, I immediately notice a difference between the two when it’s time to jump on a video call.

At home, I have one of the best webcams perched above my monitor but bringing an external webcam with you while traveling seems excessive, especially when you’re trying to pack light. I thought poor video quality was just something that I and everyone else on the other end of my calls would have to suffer through. That is until I got to go hands-on with the Opal Tadpole.

If you mainly use your laptop for video calls at home or you travel frequently for work but still need to stay in touch with home office while you’re away, here’s everything you need to know about the world’s smallest webcam and what my experience has been like using it for the past week.

Not your average webcam

Right off the bat, it’s clear that the Opal Tadpole isn’t like any other webcam you’ve seen before. This makes sense as it is the follow-up to Opal Camera’s C1 webcam which aimed to bring DSLR-style video quality to calls in a slightly larger form factor. Now though, the company is back and this time around, it’s created the world’s smallest webcam yet that also packs in some useful features.

The Opal Tadpole ($175, Amazon) was on the expensive side at launch but nowhere near the C1’s higher $300 price tag. These days though, you can often find it on sale for $45 off.

For the price, you get a compact webcam that clips onto your laptop that even comes with a rubber lens cover for when you’re not using it. The Opal Tadpole also has a braided USB-C cable which gives it a more premium look and a bead on the cable makes it easy to wrap the webcam around your wrist or to attach it to a bag when you’re on the move. There’s even a Yoyo case to help further protect the device while in transit.

If you frequently find yourself switching between Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom and other video conferencing apps, it can sometimes be difficult to remember where the mute button is. This can make it awkward when it’s finally your time to speak during a meeting. The Opal Tadpole solves this problem in a unique way as it has a mute button built directly into the end of its USB-C cable. Just tap it once to mute yourself and tap it again to unmute yourself. There’s also a red LED indicator to let you know when you’re muted.

Ultrabooks only

Before we go any further, I want to make one thing clear. The Opal Tadpole was designed with a particular style of laptop in mind: ultrabooks.  While its built-in clip can be opened up to 35 degrees, this doesn’t give you nearly enough space to attach it to a thicker laptop.

Right after unboxing it, I wanted to try using the Opal Tadpole with my Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 as we noted in our review that it has lackluster cameras. Even though Opal says the Tadpole only works with Macs and PCs, my Chromebook had no trouble recognizing the device. However, as it’s on the thicker side with a depth of 0.31-inches, I wasn’t able to clip the webcam onto it. 

Even though it’s designed with laptops in mind, I also tested out the Opal Tadpole on my desktop as that is where I take most of my video calls. As the device is flat on the bottom, I did manage to stand it up on one of my computer speakers but since it only has a 22-inch cable that’s made even shorter by the unremovable bead in the middle, I had to use a USB-C extension cable. It did work well once I had it set up properly though.

I ended up using the Opal Tadpole with my ThinkPad X13 laptop as it’s much thinner than my Chromebook. I clipped it in the center of the screen, plugged it in and it was ready to go with no software required.

A game changer for laptop video calls

Before testing out the Opal Tadpole, I would have avoided taking a video call on my laptop whenever possible. Now that I’ve been using it to do just that for the past few days though, I wouldn’t be opposed to busting out my laptop to be a bit more focused while on a video call.

Unlike at the desk in my home office where I have an ultrawide with a smaller monitor underneath it, there’s only one screen on my laptop and switching to another window means I won’t be able to see anything during a video call. With my laptop with the Opal Tadpole clipped to the top of its lid, it’s much easier to be present during a call instead of multitasking in the background.

Once I switched from my laptop’s built-in webcam to the Opal Tadpole, my coworkers immediately noticed a difference. Not only was the picture quality vastly improved but so too was the audio quality. The Opal Tadpole uses a 48MP Sony sensor with f/1.8 aperture for more life-like color. The microphone is quite interesting too as it’s a directional VisiMic microphone that only captures what the camera can see. This way, your webcam won’t pick up as much background noise and the people on the other end of the call will have an easier time hearing and understanding you.

While Opal sent over the white version of the Tadpole for me to test out, the black one definitely would have looked less out of place on top of my ThinkPad. Still, I liked how I could set it up in seconds and even though the bead in its cord is designed to make it easier to travel with, I found I could adjust it in such a way that I could tuck the entire cable behind my laptop’s lid.

I was a little concerned that attaching and then reattaching the Opal Tadpole to the lid of my laptop might damage its webcam. Fortunately though, my ThinkPad is equipped with a webcam cover which I had closed to protect the lens while using the Tadpole. 

Not leaving home without it

After using the Opal Tadpole for a week, I was so impressed that I looked into the company’s C1 webcam for my desktop. I even went as far as to download Opal’s Composer software for the webcam, only to realize that it’s made for macOS and there isn’t a Windows version yet. If that changes though, I wouldn’t mind seeing what the company’s more powerful webcam is capable of.

In the meantime though, the Opal Tadpole has earned a place in my tech travel bag and I’m planning on bringing it with me to Computex in Taiwan this summer. However, I might keep it handy for those times when I want to take a video call without distractions while looking and sounding the best that I can. I’m certainly not the target audience for the Opal Tadpole as I primarily work on my desktop but this little webcam has certainly grown on me.

More from Tom's Guide

• I streamed 500 miles of sim racing with Elgato Facecam MK.2 webcam
• How to use your phone as a webcam and why you should
• Windows 11 is getting a webcam upgrade with a little help from Android

Microsoft Teams is receiving a big overhaul that will improve the company’s messaging app.

Microsoft has launched a preview of the new Teams for businesses, with the most notable change being that Teams will now be 50% faster than the current iteration. A redesigned layout should make it easier to find messages and notifications. Teams will also use AI to get you up to speed on what happened before you joined a meeting.

The company has listened to user feedback to come up with the new version of Teams. With the changes it’s implementing, Teams should be more functional than ever. Microsoft detailed how it has improved Teams in a blog post. Here's the biggest changes coming to the company’s popular conferencing app. 

Improved performance 

Microsoft said its primary goal was making Teams twice as fast while using half the system resources. The company optimized the data, network, chat and video architecture for speed and performance.

Regarding performance gains, Microsoft worked with GigaOm, which is an independent benchmarking firm. GigaOm reports that both app launch and join meeting are twice as fast and that memory consumption has decreased by half compared to the previous teams.

In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft said it has been listening to user feedback regarding Teams running slow. Users have commented that not only has the app been sluggish, but it consumed too much battery or used up too much memory. The performance boosts Microsoft claims should make the new Teams snappier than before.

A new design 

Microsoft Teams’ new look makes it appear more like a native Windows 11 app. It achieves this by using native materials like Windows 11 Mica to give Teams the translucency of Windows apps. The company changed the canvas color from grey to white and toned down the purple Teams color. The new Teams will automatically switch to dark mode now.

Group profile and group theming is another visual change in Teams. According to Principal Design Designer Daisy Geng, this change will “help create a sense of personal space within Teams, customers can set a profile picture for their groups in any group chat.” Users can also assign different colors to specific groups instead of everything being the default purple. This should make it easier to identify different groups at a glance.

AI-powered features 

Microsoft says the new Teams will be the foundation for “next-generation” AI experiences, which will include previously announced initiatives like intelligent recap and Copilot for Microsoft Teams. Microsoft wants to use AI to “take the work out of working together” by catching you up on what happened before you joined a meeting or chat, for example.

As Microsoft previously stated when it introduced Copilot for Microsoft Teams, adding the AI assistant can help you with tasks like creating meeting agendas based on chat history, identify the right people for follow-ups, and scheduling the next check-in. You can use prompts like “summarize what I missed in the meeting” and “what points have been made so far?” and get answers in real-time.

Outlook 

The new Microsoft Teams is available now in preview mode and will launch for the public later in 2023. For the moment, businesses have to be part of the Microsoft Teams public preview to try out the new Teams.

Microsoft Teams gained increased popularity during the height of the global pandemic. With so many users, it makes sense for the company to give the application an overhaul to make it faster and easier to use. The AI features are intriguing and it’ll be interesting to see how it will function during meetings.

It’s too early to tell, but the new Microsoft Teams could make it more enticing and broaden its appeal even further.

More from Tom's Guide

• How to use Bing with ChatGPT
• Microsoft Teams just stole this big feature from Slack
• ChatGPT could soon attend meetings for you — here's how

The Elgato Facecam is looking to breathe new life into the oversaturated market of plug-and-play webcams, and content creators everywhere will appreciate the face-hugging specs under the hood. 

Hybrid work environments and high-res web conferencing have become home office mainstays, and the best laptops for video editing keep getting better and better, as do the peripherals we plug into them. Case-in-point: while some webcams focus on ultra-wide viewing angles for the business crowd (and larger groups), Elgato’s Facecam was conversely “crafted for creators,” and it’s touted as “the world's most powerful webcam” on their website. Cue the Hans Zimmer soundtrack in the background as my eyebrows ascend in slow motion.

It’s a bold claim for sure, but the optics speak for themselves: the Facecam was a CES 2022 Innovation Awards honoree, which bodes well for that beautiful Elgato Prime lens thanks to an f/2.4 aperture, 24-millimeter focal length, and a world-class Sony Starvis CMOS.

The whole package is markedly bulkier than your average plug-and-play webcam, but that extra heft has a purpose, and the resulting video is nothing short of fantastic. Whereas action cameras like the GoPro Hero10 Black are made for when you’re on the move, the Facecam is meant for relatively immobile video shot from your laptop or MacBook, and it excels as a home office tool for anyone crafting indoor content on the regular — no matter the lighting conditions. 

Is this one of the best webcams you can get your hands on, edging out the excellent Logitech Streamcam and Anker PowerConf C300? Read our full Elgato Facecam review for the full scoop.

Elgato Facecam review: Price, availability and compatibility  

As of this writing, the Facecam costs $170 at Elgato’s website. This is the exact same price as the comparably-specced Logitech StreamCam, coincidentally, but $40 more expensive than the Anker PowerConf C300; all three webcams are capable of shooting at 60 frames per second, though at different resolutions.

The Elgato Facecam is refreshingly plug-and-play right out of the box, but its functionality increases tenfold with the accompanying software. You’ll need Windows 10 (64-bit) or Mac OS 11 (Big Sur or later) for the desktop app, and the subscription-based Stream Deck Mobile app works with both iOS and Android. The Facecam is fully compatible with Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other video-streaming platforms, allowing you to seamlessly transition between streaming and recording at the drop of a hat.

• Facecam at Amazon for $170

Elgato Facecam review: DSLR-like design

When placed side-by-side with the Anker PowerConf C200 (which resembles a mini-GoPro), it looks like Elgato sliced a symmetrical chunk out of a full-sized DSLR to create the Facecam, which is a good thing; the more nearby light Elgato’s larger lens has access to, the better picture quality you can expect overall. With such enhanced optics under the hood, however, the Facecam comes with a little extra heft; at 3.1 x 2.3 x 1.9 inches and 3.4 ounces, it’s almost an ounce lighter than the Anker PowerConf C300, and a half-ounce lighter than the PowerConf C200.

The mounting clip made it easy to swivel and tilt the Facecam exactly where I wanted once it was secured to either my laptop display or external monitor. Similar to most webcams in this price range, you’ll find integrated tripod threading on the bottom. The extra-long 6-foot USB cord should be plenty long for most, allowing you to set the Facecam on your desktop if necessary. 

Unlike most contemporary webcams, you won’t find any built-in mics flanking the lens — or anything else, for that matter. Uniquely, the Facecam uses your laptop’s mic to capture sound instead, dedicating all of its own inner tech to uncompressed video processing. This removes the necessity of re-encoding video through your laptop as you stream. The end result? Less latency and fewer artifacts. Plus, thanks to the Facecam’s onboard memory, all of your settings are saved on the webcam itself, making it easy to switch between Windows and Mac machines in an instant.

The lens cover snaps off much like it would on a DSLR, which is as much for privacy as it is protection; there’s much more lens to damage during any accidental drops than with smaller, less-powerful webcams like the PowerConf C200. There’s also a blue LED light next to the lens to let you know when the webcam is active.

Facecam review: Video and audio quality

To give the Facecam its fair share of facetime, I used it for several video calls over Zoom, Slack, and Google Meet. I did some of my testing during the day — with plenty of natural sunlight coming in from the window next to me — and at dusk, with much dimmer lighting from my living room lamps. I then compared image quality against the mediocre 720p webcam on my laptop and the recently reviewed Anker PowerConf C300 and C200 during the exact same conditions. Lastly, I compared still photos from each webcam to evaluate overall image quality.

It seems that in order to achieve that smooth-as-silk video quality, Elgato was forced to tighten up the field of view (FOV). Whereas you can toggle between 65, 78, and 95 degrees on the PowerConf C200 and up to a whopping 115 degrees with the PowerConf C300 via the AnkerWork desktop app, the Facecam maxes out at 83.2 degrees. However, the Elgato Camera Hub lets you manually adjust the FOV a few degrees at a time (akin to a DSLR), allowing you to digitally zoom in all the way to 24.4 degrees. This capability alone underlines how the Facecam is best for recording/streaming individuals, as opposed to groups.

(Note: While I have not personally tested the Logitech Streamcam, its 78-degree FOV isn’t adjustable, which is kind of a bummer but hardly a deal-breaker.) 

In terms of video performance, colors absolutely popped in all of my live chats, with test callers reporting improved video quality across the board when I toggled between the Anker PowerConf C300/C200 webcams and the Elgato Facecam. The f/2.4 aperture, 24-mm focal length, and Sony Starvis CMOS sensor did an impressive job of enhancing contrast, tonality, and sharpness while minimizing noise and color distortion.

When I tested the Facecam in lower light over Zoom, my friend reported a thin black outline around certain objects (like the text of a book cover), but much smoother video quality overall when compared to Anker. Audio came through crystal-clear on both ends, and my friend couldn’t discern a difference in voice quality whenever I toggled between webcams. Which makes sense, since your Zoom does all the backend audio processing for all three devices, at the end of the day.

Without adjusting the default camera settings at all, the details of my orange shirt and faded red trucker hat came through much better using the Facecam versus the PowerConf C300 and C200, with a speedier autofocus whenever I moved my mug closer to the lens. The lighting also adjusted dynamically as I moved around the room, making the Facecam ideal for just about any shooting environment.

For a more objective perspective, here’s a side-by-side image comparison of the Elgato Facecam, Anker PowerConf C300, PowerConf C200 over Zoom:

Elgato Facecam review: Desktop and smartphone apps

As mentioned above, the Facecam’s Flash memory lets you save your favorite settings right to the webcam itself, making it easy to switch between different laptops without re-tweaking the software each time. And while the Facecam is plug-and-play right out of the box, the Elgato Camera Hub lets you tweak even more settings than you might expect from the average webcam: 

• Device – This is where you can change your device input (if you have more than one Elgato cam) and change settings for the LED status light
• Zoom – Toggle the FOV between 83.2 and 24.4 degrees
• Picture – Lets you tweak the contrast, saturation, and sharpness
• Exposure – Choose between automatic or manual exposure, which lets you manage shutter speed and ISO settings
• White Balance – The automatic white balance setting works just fine, but you can manually adjust the color temperature if you like
• Processing – Lets you turn noise reduction on and off, and toggle the anti-flicker between 60 Hz and 50 Hz (for recording under artificial lighting)
• Preview Format – Toggles between 1080p at 60/30 fps, 720p at 60/30 fps, and 540p at 60/30 fps

Overall, Elgato’s software has a similar flavor to Anker and Logitech, but the former software appears to be the most robust when it comes to customization. If you pony up to an additional $3/month or $25/year subscription, the mobile Stream Deck app adds even more functionality to the mix, turning your smartphone into a useful remote.

(Note: If you have an Nvidia GeForce RTX 20-series graphics card or better, you get access to even more special effects in the Camera Hub, such as blurred backgrounds; I didn’t get the chance to test this feature.) 

Facecam review: Verdict

Creators rejoice! It may cost more than the average plug-and-play webcam, but the Elgato Facecam is absolutely worth the investment for above-average videos, especially if you’re shooting content on a weekly basis. 

Granted, you’ll find many of the same features (along with similar specs) aboard the Logitech Streamcam, but the Facecam feels more like a DSLR that you happen to perch on your laptop. And while you get a much wider FOV with the Anker PowerConf C300, that particular webcam is better suited for the business sector. 

Audio and video tech is getting more compact (and affordable!) with every passing year, and the Elgato Facecam is a great example of high-end optics in a tidy package. Thanks to cutting-edge specs, top-tier performance, and a useful software package to boot, this is the webcam to beat.

The best video chat apps are a great way to get face time with people who aren't in the same physical location as you. Because, if the COVID-19 pandemic showed us anything, it's that we can maintain meaningful relationships over long distances. And that hasn't changed just because life is more or less back to normal.

Video chat apps can offer a virtual presence at physical events, or help you stay in touch with friends and family who live too far away to meet in person on a regular basis. The internet can bridge those physical gaps in a way that's as easy to do as picking up the phone.

But which of these apps is right for you? There are plenty of options out there, and choosing the right one might be a bit tricky. Lucky for you we've rounded up all the best video chat apps around, and you can use them all without paying a penny.

The best video chat apps you can download today

Best all-round video chat app

The pandemic proved to be a big deal for Zoom, cementing its position as the de facto video chat app for a lot of people and businesses — and with good reason. Zoom's extensive feature set and extensive platform support has made it a popular choice across the world. Whether you're on desktop, mobile, or prefer a web client, Zoom offers something for you.

Screen sharing, encryption, and live annotations all come a standard with Zoom, regardless of whether you pay or not. But while a simple one-on-one chat doesn't have any restrictions, having more than three people in a meeting restricts free users to a 40-minute time limit. If you want un restricted access for up to 100 people, you'll need to pay $16 a month for the Pro tier, while the pricier Business tier raises that cap even higher.

Zoom suffered from a number of high-profile security issues in the early days of the pandemic, but things have since changed for the better. Calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, there are new privacy-focussed notifications, and an updated privacy policy makes it clear who can save and share meetings recordings.

Best video chat app for Android users

While Apple has had Facetime for years, Google's Android operating system lacked its own native equivalent. Instead people had to rely on third party apps that were downloaded from the Play Store, and hope their friends were willing to sign up as well

Google has had many alternatives to choose from over the years, including the now-dead Google Duo. These days Google Meet is the company's go-to video chat platform, proving to be remarkably easy to use and accessible within Android's native phone app.

Meet is even available on iOS, so you can keep in touch with your iPhone-toting friends without having to buy an Apple device for Facetime access. It even has the larger 100 person limit than Facetime, and lets people call in using a phone number. So they don't have much of an excuse to stay away.

Best video chat app for gamers

Gamers already know Discord as a great resource for connecting with their friends over text, but did you know Discord supports video chat, too? Additionally, because it allows for streaming in the app itself, it's a great way to play some games with friends, by streaming one user's screen content to the rest of the group.

In fact, the Tom's Guide staff did exactly that multiple times during the COVID lockdowns, with one user sharing Quiplash from their PC's display to the rest of us playing along by phone. Thankfully, Discord has even gone so far as to raise its Go Live built-in streaming service from a maximum of 10 people to 50 people temporarily.

If you upgrade to Nitro, which costs $10 per month, you can raise the streaming quality to 1080p/60 fps, up from a max of 720p/30 fps for the free tier. Nitro Basic offers some perks for $3 a month, but streaming quality is not among them.

Best video chat app for iPhone

It's no surprise that FaceTime should appear on this list of the best video chat apps. Apple's software wasn't the first in video chatting, but it was the one that started it all for mobile users, and led the industry toward making video chat easier and more accessible.

Today, FaceTime is preinstalled on all Apple hardware and supports a number of really fun and useful features, from cute Animojis, Memojis and stickers to allowing up to 32 people on a single call. And because FaceTime also has a voice call component — FaceTime Audio — you can easily route calls over data or Wi-Fi whenever you like, where your conversations will sound infinitely better than they do over your cellular provider's voice network.

The only downside to FaceTime is of course that you'll only get the full experience on Apple hardware, including iPhones and Macs. Android and Windows users can join in calls from a web browser, but they can't actually host them. Still it's better than being completely locked out, as was the case before.

Best cross-platform Facetime alternative

The beauty of using Facebook Messenger for video chat is that you're probably already signed up to use it. As long as you have a Facebook account and the Facebook Messenger mobile or web app, you can start video chatting with your Facebook friends right now. Even if you had a Facebook account at one time and have since deactivated it, you can still use Messenger.

Just tap the little video camera icon in the upper-right corner of the screen, and you can start a call with an individual or chat group. And just like Skype, up to 50 people can be present on a Facebook Messenger video call at the same time — a good sight greater than the maximum 32 video chatters supported by Apple's FaceTime.

Plus, even while you video chat, you can still use Facebook Messenger's myriad other functions, like sending chat messages, stickers and so on.

Best cross-platform video chat and messaging app

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging alternatives on smartphones today, both because you can join with only a phone number and because many of your friends and family are probably already using it.

Up until recently, WhatsApp's video calling feature wasn't the most robust out there. But that changed once the max participant limit was raised to 50, thanks to an integration with Facebook Messenger's new Rooms feature.

WhatsApp video calls are also end-to-end encrypted, just like chat messages. In other words, you'll never have to worry about any of your conversations being intercepted by nefarious interlopers.

Previously video calling was also only available on mobile devices, but recently that changed. It is possible to make and receive video calls through WhatsApp's desktop client. Everything works exactly the same way, the only difference if you're using a desktop instead of a mobile device.

Best professional video chat app

While primarily aimed at businesses and professionals, there's still a Microsoft Teams can offer. Especially if you ever plan on getting together in particularly large groups. The free tier lets you have up to 100 people in a call, which should be more than enough for even the largest of family reunions.

Unlike Microsoft-owned Skype, Teams also comes with some professional tools that you may still find useful talking with other. Tools like screensharing, background blur, and noise-suppression software powered by Teams' own AI. It even connects to Office, and is included in an Office 365 plan, in case that's ever relevant outside of the office.

While Teams does have a reputation for being a bit messy, it's usually the professional tier that comes out worse for wear. But if you plan on just using Teams as a video chat app, then you don't need to worry about that too much.

How to choose the best video chat app for you

Because all of the best video chat apps have free tiers, you shouldn't be worried about trying different ones to find something you like. After all the riskiest thing you might have to do is install the software and make a new account.

But if you want to know where to start, the best advice is to take stock of what you need this app for. If you're just looking to chat on your phone alone, Meet, FaceTime or one of Facebook's offerings will suffice.

However, if you and your friends use a number of devices to connect — phones, tablets, computers and so on — or your need is more professional or collaborative, we recommend leaning toward Teams, Zoom, Skype or Discord. These apps are available on every platform, and even though some of them offer paid tiers, you likely won't need to use them. Especially if your head count is small enough, or the length of time you plan to chat is relatively short.

The paid tiers will come with fancier features in many cases, but the free versions are already pretty feature-rich. At the very least you'll have access to all the basic features you need to chat with other people.

Ultimately, you'll probably end up on whatever video chat app your friends and family already prefer using — that's the way these things tend to go. But if you're all in the mood for a replacement, one of the options in this list will hopefully suffice.

Do you use Zoom? Sure you do. When the pandemic hit North America and Europe in March 2020, seemingly everyone who had to start working, going to school or even socializing from home started using the videoconferencing service.

Boy were there growing pains though. Zoom went from 10 million daily users in December 2019 to 300 million daily users in April 2020. Its security and privacy practices came under sharp scrutiny — and experts didn't like what they found.

Zoom's end-to-end encryption wasn't quite end-to-end. Other Zoom meeting attendees could see a lot about you. Pranksters and bored teenagers could — and sometimes still — "Zoom bomb" public meetings with shocking or rude content.

Zoom's privacy policies also seemed to give the company the right to do whatever it wanted with users' personal data.

Most of those flaws have been fixed or otherwise mitigated since the spring of 2020, but newer issues crop up occasionally. We've got a running list of what's gone wrong with Zoom, what's been fixed and what's still an open issue — after we give you a few tips on how to make Zoom safer to use.

With all these issues, people have been looking for alternatives to Zoom, so check out our Skype vs Zoom face-off to see how an old video app has adapted for video conferencing. We've also compared Zoom vs Google Hangouts as well, and even have a rundown of the best free Zoom backgrounds.

How to make Zoom safer to use

Unless you're discussing state secrets or personal health information, Zoom should be fine to use. It's easy to set up, easy to use and lets up to 100 people join a meeting for free. It just works.

For school classes, after-work get-togethers, or even workplace meetings that stick to routine business, there's not much risk in using Zoom. Kids will probably continue to flock to it, as they can even use Snapchat filters on Zoom.

Here's what you can do to make Zoom safer:

— Set up Zoom's two-factor authentication to protect your account.

— Join Zoom meetings through your web browser instead of via the Zoom desktop software. The web browser version gets security enhancements faster and "sits in a sandbox" to limit security problems, notes antivirus company Kaspersky.

When you click a link to join a meeting, your browser will open a new tab and prompt you to use or install the Zoom desktop software. But there's a smaller link to "join from your browser." Click that instead.

— Ask that Zoom meeting participants sign in with a password if you are hosting a meeting. That will make Zoom-bombing much less likely.

Everything that's gone wrong with Zoom lately

We've put the most recent Zoom issues up top and separated older problems into those that are unresolved, those that have been fixed and those that don't fit into either category.

January. 9, 2023: Fake Zoom app used to deliver malware

Security researchers at the firm Cyble have discovered a new phishing campaign that targets Zoom users in order to deliver the IcedID malware. This malware is a banking trojan that can be used to steal user credentials though its mainly used to target businesses in order to steal payment information.

Through their phishing site, the attackers behind this campaign trick users into thinking they are downloading the legitimate Zoom Client for Windows. However, the executable is actually the IcedID malware. To avoid falling victim to this campaign and others like it, you should only download Zoom as well as updates for the video conferencing app from Zoom's official website or use the software's auto-update functionality. Fortunately, the site hosting this fake Zoom client has now been taken down.

September. 19, 2022: CERT-In warns about multiple Zoom vulnerabilities

CERT-In (the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) has identified several vulnerabilities in Zoom. While one of the vulnerabilities can allow an unauthorized remote attacker to join a Zoom meeting, another could allow a remote hacker to download audio and video from meetings they aren't authorized to join if exploited. All of these vulnerabilities have been reported to Zoom and CERT-In recommends updating to the latest version of the software to avoid any potential attacks leveraging them.

August. 15, 2022: Zoom patches a security flaw on macOS

Security researcher Patrick Wardle discovered a serious weakness in Zoom that could allow a hacker to take control of macOS, letting them edit, add or even delete files at will.

Fortunately, Zoom acted quickly to patch the flaw, so Mac users need to update Zoom right away to make sure they're protected against the exploit.

July. 28, 2022: Zoom goes down for thousands of users

Zoom suffered an outage that affected thousands of users based on reports from Downdetector. According to the company's status dashboard, its telephony feature faced degraded performance that made it difficult for users to make calls using Zoom Phone.

The issue has since been fixed and everything appears to be working as normal at Zoom now.

May. 25, 2022: Tricking users into downgrading their Zoom client

A security researcher from Google's Project Zero discovered a security flaw in which the Zoom Client for Meetings and Zoom Rooms for Conference Room software fail to properly check the installation version during the update process. As Zoom's server and its client server use different XML parsing libraries, a hacker could send a specific message to force the target client to download an older version of Zoom to launch attacks using vulnerabilities that have since been patched.

This security flaw was patched with the release of Zoom version 5.10.0 which also fixes a number of other vulnerabilities. Updating to the latest version of the videoconferencing software will protect you from any attacks exploiting this flaw.

Feb. 10, 2022: Mac microphones not turning off

Following reports from multiple Mac users who said their microphones stayed on even after Zoom meetings had ended, Zoom pushed out a patch that was supposed to fix the problem. It didn't quite work. 

Another patch a month later finally did turn the microphones off. Make sure your Zoom desktop client on Mac is updated to version 5.9.3. You may have to install the update "manually" by downloading it directly from the Zoom website.

Dec. 7, 2021: Zoom enables automatic updates

Zoom's client software for Windows and Mac personal use now lets you enable automatic updates, which means you'll get all the latest crucial security fixes as soon as they come. 

Even better, the new feature lets you choose a "fast" or "slow" lane for less urgent updates, meaning that you can choose whether to get all the latest features and risk a little instability, or to proceed at a steady pace with maximum reliability. 

Automatic updates will probably be enabled by default soon for all new and existing users. If you'd like to turn off (or turn on) the feature, go to Zoom > Settings > General and look for "Zoom Updates."

Dec. 7, 2021: Zoom class-action-lawsuit settlement

As a result of a settlement in a class-action lawsuit relating to some of the privacy and security issues detailed earlier on this page, anyone who used Zoom between March 30, 2016 and July 30, 2021 is entitled to a cash payout.

It might not be a lot of money per person. Paying Zoom subscribers "are entitled to receive either 15% of the total you paid to Zoom" during the eligibility period "or $25, whichever is greater." Free Zoom users can get $15. The amounts may be reduced if more people file claims than Zoom can pay out from the $85 million allocated.

To file a claim, read the fine print at ZoomMeetingClassAction.com and then go to the Submit a Claim page. Tom's Guide cannot guarantee that you will get anything.

Nov. 18, 2021: Zoom fixes three serious flaws in conferencing software

Zoom has patched three serious flaws in some of its enterprise video-conferencing software, the worst of which could have let an attacker penetrate a company's internal server system. 

The following enterprise Zoom applications are vulnerable and must be updated, per a report from Positive Technologies: Meeting Connector Controller up to version 4.6.348.20201217; Meeting Connector MMR up to version 4.6.348.20201217; Recording Connector up to version 3.8.42.20200905; Virtual Room Connector up to version 4.4.6620.20201110; and Virtual Room Connector Load Balancer prior to version 2.5.5495.20210326.

Regarding consumer software, Zoom has fixed a security flaw in Zoom Client for Meetings for Windows, which needs to be updated to version 5.5.4. That's according to the Zoom Security Bulletin page.

Oct. 19, 2021: Zoom requires users to be no more than 9 months behind in software updates

Zoom announced that beginning Nov. 1, 2021, "customers will be required to update their Zoom software to ensure it is no more than nine months behind the current version at any given time." If you don't update your software, you won't be able to join Zoom meetings.

Anyone running software older than that will be prompted to update their software. This affects all Zoom software running on all supported platforms except for Zoom Room Controller software, at least for now.

Sept. 30, 2021: Zoom security flaws patched

Zoom disclosed several security issues that had been fixed in later versions of Zoom's desktop clients and plug-ins for Microsoft Outlook for both Windows and macOS. 

The flaws ranged in severity from low to high, with some allowing remote code execution — i.e., hacking over the internet — on user machines. All were patched by at least Zoom Client for Meetings 5.4.0 and Zoom Plug-In for Microsoft Outlook for Mac 5.0.25611.0521.

Sept. 13, 2021: Encrypted Zoom Phone calls

Zoom announced that it planned to roll out end-to-end encryption to Zoom Phone, its paid cloud calling service for Pro, Business or Enterprise accounts. The end-to-end encryption will be an option for one-to-one Zoom Phone calls.

Aug. 13, 2021: Zoom fixes hacking flaw

Zoom announced via its Zoom Security Bulletin that the remote-hacking flaw demonstrated at the Pwn2Own competition in April had been fixed. 

All users, whether on Windows, Mac or Linux, should update their Zoom Client for Meetings software to version 5.6.3 or later.

July 31, 2021: Zoom settles class-action lawsuit

Zoom reached a tentative settlement in a federal class-action lawsuit that alleged the company skimped on security, misled users and shared user personal data with third parties without notification or consent.

According to the agreement, which has yet to be approved by a judge, Zoom will pay $85 million to be distributed to anyone who had a Zoom consumer account between March 2016 and now. (Enterprise and government Zoom account holders are not part of this litigation.)

Paying Zoom users are eligible to receive 15% of their subscription fees or $25, whichever is greater; non-paying users are eligible to receive $15. Known class members will be notified by email or regular mail that they can file a claim, and others will be able to use the website www.zoommeetingsclassaction.com when it goes live.

Zoom does not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. 

June 4, 2021: New Zoom privacy policy

Zoom has released a "simpler, clearer" privacy policy that reflects the fact that the online meeting service has "shifted from a primarily enterprise-focused product to one that is also used broadly by individuals" during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The updated privacy policy includes more details about who can "see, save and share" Zoom meeting content, and the kinds of data that Zoom collects from users' devices. 

You can read the full updated Zoom privacy "statement" here. 

May 1, 2021: Zoom introduces privacy notifications

In a blog post, Zoom announced that it had added privacy notifications to the latest version of its desktop client software. 

"Users will see new in-product notifications designed to make it easier to understand who can see, save, and share their content and information when they join meetings and experiences hosted on Zoom," says the post.

The notifications appear in the in-meeting chat window as a button labeled "Who can see your messages?" Click your mouse on that, and a notification bubble will pop up with the answer. 

"Users will find similar information when they use other meeting features," says the blog post, "such as transcription, polls, and Q&A." 

It added that future updates would include notifications when a meeting host or participant uses a Zoom transcription or scheduling app during a meeting.

April 8, 2021: Zoom flaw lets hacker hijacks PCs and Macs

Two researchers demonstrated at the Pwn2Own contest that they could remotely take over Windows PCs and Macs by using at least one previously unknown vulnerability in the Zoom desktop application.

Fortunately, the only people who fully understand how this exploit works are the two researchers and Zoom itself, which is working on a fix. The chances of this attack being used "in the wild" are low, but if you're concerned, use the Zoom browser interface instead during meetings until this is fixed.

March 19, 2021: Flaw lets other Zoom users see way too much

Zoom lets meeting participants share all of their computer screens, part of their screens, or just specific application windows with other people in the same meeting. 

Two German researchers discovered that for a brief moment, the entire screen may be visible even when the Zoom user sharing the screen intends only part of the screen to be. Any participants recording the meeting would be able to freeze frames during playback and view potentially sensitive information.

Zoom said it was working to fix the issue, but at the time of this writing, the flaw was still present in the latest version of the Zoom desktop client software for at least Windows and Linux.

Feb. 23, 2021: Zoom's Keybase encrypted chat fixes a serious flaw

Keybase, an encrypted social-media verification system and chat app bought by Zoom in May 2020, had a serious flaw that preserved images in online directories even after the user had deleted them.

The flaw was reported to Zoom in early January 2021, and a Keybase software update to fix the flaw was released later that month.

Feb. 8, 2021: Study says trying to stop Zoom-bombing often won't work

A new study conducted by researchers at Boston University and Binghamton University found that efforts to stop "Zoom bombing," such as requiring passwords or making attendees stew in "waiting rooms," often won't work. 

That's because many attacks are carried out by "insiders" who are already authorized to be in the meetings.

"Our findings indicate that the vast majority of calls for Zoom bombing are not made by attackers stumbling upon meeting invitations or brute-forcing their meeting ID, but rather by insiders who have legitimate access to these meetings, particularly students in high school and college classes," states the paper, entitled "A First Look at Zoombombing."

The "only effective defense" against such insider attacks, the paper argues, is to create "unique join links for each participant."

Jan. 29, 2021: City works to outlaw Zoom-bombing

Plagued by an epidemic of Zoom-bombing during city-assembly meetings, the city of Juneau, Alaska is exploring ways to outlaw the practice.

"We've had a few at the assembly level, we've had a few at the school-board level, we've had a few in some committee board time meetings," city attorney Rob Palmer said, according to the website of radio station KTOO.

Police in Alaska's capital have had a hard time tracking down the Zoom bombers. The city hopes that by making the practice illegal, it can compel Zoom to turn over information identifying the digital miscreants.

Dec. 21, 2020: Zoom executive accused of being Chinese spy

In a bombshell announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice said it had issued an arrest warrant for former Zoom executive Jin Xinjiang, aka Julien Jin, who until recently had served as the liaison between Zoom and the Chinese government.

The U.S. accused Jin of using his position to disrupt and terminate Zoom meetings among U.S.-based Zoom users commemorating the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and to provide information to the Chinese government about Zoom users and Zoom meetings. Jin is thought to be residing in China.

Jin allegedly had help from unnamed co-conspirators who created fake email accounts and Zoom accounts in the names of known Chinese dissidents "to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography."

The Dept. of Justice said the Chinese government used information provided by Jin to retaliate against Zoom users in China or the Chinese-resident families of Zoom users outside China.

The DoJ announcement and arrest warrant refer only to an unnamed "Company-1" as Jin's employer, but in a blog post, Zoom admitted that it was the company and that it had been conducting its own investigation after it received a subpoena from the U.S. government in June 2020. 

The post further explained that Jin had been hired by Zoom in October 2019 as part of an agreement with the Chinese government, which in September 2019 had "turned off our service in China without warning."

The price of getting Zoom turned back on in China was to hire "an in-house contact for law enforcement requests" — i.e., Jin — and to move data on Chinese users to servers in China. Zoom service was restored in China in November 2019, and the Dept. of Justice's arrest warrant for Jin was issued a year later.

"We learned during the course of our investigation that this former employee violated Zoom's policies by, among other things, attempting to circumvent certain internal access controls," Zoom said. "We have terminated this individual's employment."

Zoom admitted that Jin "shared or directed the sharing of a limited amount of individual user data with Chinese authorities," and that the information of "fewer than ten ... non-China-based users" had also been provided to China. 

Dec. 7, 2020: Zoom phishing scams

The Better Business Bureau is warning Zoom users that scammers are trying to steal their usernames and passwords via phishing emails and text messages, reports Threatpost.

The messages tell you that "your Zoom account has been suspended" or that "you missed a meeting," and offer a helpful link to log back in. But don't fall for the bait -- the login page is really a trap to capture your Zoom user credentials, with which the crooks can use or even steal your Zoom account.

Nov. 16, 2020: Zoom finally busts Zoom-bombing

One of the biggest problems with Zoom has been "Zoom bombing," in which uninvited participants crash a Zoom meeting and disrupt it. Over the weekend, Zoom released two new features to combat this. 

One, "Suspend Participant Activities," lets the meeting host pause the meeting, kick out disruptive participants, and then resume the meeting. The other, "Report by Participants," extends to meeting participants the ability to report disruptive participants, a remedy that previously had been given only to meeting hosts.

Nov. 10, 2020: FTC says Zoom lied about security

The Federal Trade Commission announced that Zoom "misled users" and "engaged in a series of deceptive and unfair practices" regarding its own security. The FTC cited the fake end-to-end encryption uncovered in March and software that Zoom installed on Macs without authorization in 2018 and 2019. 

Zoom must agree to yearly internal security reviews and external security reviews every other year and must implement a vulnerability-management program. Another stipulation was that Zoom offer customers multi-factor authentication, which it has already implemented. 

Nov. 6, 2020: Zoom keystroke snooping

Researchers in Texas and Oklahoma discovered that it's possible to tell what someone is typing during a Zoom call just by watching their shoulders and arms. 

Using a computer, the research team was able to figure out people's passwords up to 75% of the time, depending on camera resolution and whether the subject was wearing a sleeved shirt or had long hair.

Any kind of video-conferencing platform could be used for this, the researchers said, as could YouTube videos or streaming platforms like Twitch.

Oct. 27, 2020: End-to-end encryption goes live

Zoom's end-to-end-encryption feature finally went live, except on iOS where it had to wait for Apple's approval. We've got instructions on how to enable Zoom's end-to-end encryption.

Oct. 15, 2020: End-to-end encryption is coming soon

After a long period of time with no Zoom news, the company announced that the end-to-end encryption it had been working on for many months would soon be available for beta testing. 

Users will have to wait for a Zoom client software update in the third week of October. Meeting hosts will be deciding whether to make a Zoom meeting end-to-end encrypted. Those meetings will not work (for now) for users trying to join via the web-browser interface or over the telephone.

July 31, 2020: Security flaw would have allowed anyone to join a public meeting

If you recall that the Zoom web interface was out of commission for a few days back in April 2020, now we know why: The company was fixing a very serious security flaw that could have let anyone join a private Zoom meeting.

British security researcher Tom Anthony detailed on his blog this week how he found that he could make endless random guesses on the 6-digit PINs Zoom assigns to private meetings. That's a million possibilities to go through, which might be tough for a human, but isn't hard for a decently powered PC running multiple threads.

Anthony found he could break into Zoom meetings in about half an hour, give or take. That's long before many meetings are over.

The flaw is fixed now, so you don't need to worry about that particular avenue of Zoom bombing.

STATUS: Fixed.

July 10, 2020: Remote takeover flaw

An unnamed security researcher found a critical flaw in the Zoom meetings client software for Windows that would let a hacker remotely take over any PC running Windows 7 or earlier. Zoom fixed the flaw with a software update soon after the flaw became public knowledge.

STATUS: Fixed.

June 17, 2020: Zoom caves to critics, will offer end-to-end encryption to everyone

Backing down after sustained criticism from privacy advocates, Zoom announced in a blog posting June 17 that its upcoming end-to-end encryption (E2E) wouldn't just be for paid users any more. The millions of people who use Zoom for free for school, socializing and work would get end-to-end encryption too.

"We have identified a path forward that balances the legitimate right of all users to privacy and the safety of users on our platform," CEO Eric S. Yuan wrote. "This will enable us to offer E2EE as an advanced add-on feature for all of our users around the globe -- free and paid -- while maintaining the ability to prevent and fight abuse on our platform."

But if you're a free user who wants E2E, you'll first have to verify your identity to Zoom via a one-time-password or similar service. This will make it harder to "zoom bomb" meetings. 

The E2E encryption will remain an optional feature, Yuan reminded, because when it's activated, no one can join a meeting over the phone or with certain office teleconferencing equipment. It'll be up to meeting hosts whether to activate E2E.

June 12, 2020: Censorship

Zoom's in hot water in the U.S. over free speech and censorship after, bowing to Chinese government demands, it temporarily suspended the accounts of three Chinese dissidents who were hosting open meetings commemorating the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

The company apologized for the actions in a blog post June 11 and said it would develop a way to block meeting participants from certain locations (i.e., China) without shutting down meetings entirely. 

That wasn't enough to satisfy more than a dozen U.S. congressmen and senators from both parties, who wrote letters to Chinese-born Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan demanding to know how cozy his company was with the Beijing government.

June 4, 2020: Cisco Talos reveals two serious Zoom flaws

Talos, an information-security research firm owned by Cisco, revealed June 3 that it had found two serious flaws in Zoom client applications, both of which have now been patched. 

The first flaw would have let an attacker use a specially created animated GIF placed in a Zoom meeting chat to hack Zoom client software on other people's machines to force the installation of malware, or, as Talos put it, "achieve arbitrary code execution."

The second flaw also involves the chat function in Zoom meeting client software, with similarly serious potential consequences. The problem was that Zoom did not validate the contents of shared compressed files such as .zip files. 

An attacker could have sent malware in the form of a compressed file to a user via Zoom meeting chat, and the user's Zoom client would have saved and opened the malware within the Zoom application's directory.

Even worse, if the user were to save the Zoom compressed file elsewhere on the PC, such as on the desktop, then the attacked could send an altered version of the first file with the same name. 

Zoom would open the second version (but not the first) automatically, permitting the malware to "plant binaries at almost arbitrary paths and ... potentially overwrite important files and lead to arbitrary code execution."

STATUS: Fixed.

Monday, June 1, 2020: End-to-end encryption may be limited to paid users

Zoom's upcoming end-to-end encryption is mainly for paid users, as Zoom itself stated back on May 7. But Alex Stamos, a well-known information-security expert who is consulting Zoom on security matters, told Reuters last week that schools and other non-profit enterprises might be able to also get the end-to-end encryption for their accounts. 

"The CEO is looking at different arguments," Stamos told Reuters. "The current plan is paid customers plus enterprise accounts where the company knows who they are."

May 27, 2020: Security update

All administrators of Zoom Rooms need to update their software by May 30, Zoom said in a blog posting May 26. 

The update to Zoom 5.0 will provide "greater security and privacy host controls," Zoom said, but also "meet the minimum requirements of version 5.0 or greater for GCM encryption, which will be enabled and required for all meetings on May 30."

More information about updating Zoom Rooms is here. The 5.0 updates for Zoom client software were pushed out to Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Chrome OS, Amazon Fire and Linux users at the end of April. 

May 21, 2020: Corrupted Zoom installers

Two more instances of corrupted Zoom installers were found by Trend Micro researchers. 

The first opens up a backdoor on a PC; the second spies on the PC's owner with screenshots, keylogging and webcam hijacking and drafts the PC into the Devil Shadow botnet. 

Both installers do install the Zoom software client, so victims may be none the wiser. As always, get your Zoom software straight from the Zoom website at Zoom.us, or join a Zoom meeting straight from your web browser.

May 18, 2020: Outages after a backend update

Zoom suffered an unexplained outage Sunday, May 17, rendering it unavailable to thousands of users in the U.S. and U.K. The outage, which began Sunday morning U.K. time, lasted several hours and affected online church services in both countries. Even the British government's daily coronavirus briefing was affected, knocking out the ability of journalists to ask questions over Zoom.

Some users reported on Twitter that logging out of Zoom accounts, then logging back in, seemed to solve the issue. 

Zoom's status page noted that a backend update had taken place earlier Sunday morning, but there didn't seem to be any linkage between that update and the outage that began a few hours later. 

The Zoom status page said at the time that the outages "appear to be limited to a subset of users" and that Zoom was "working to identify the root cause and scope of this issue." A few hours later, the problem was declared "resolved" without further details.

May 12, 2020: Domain impersonation

Cybercriminals may have registered hundreds of new Zoom-related website addresses in the past few weeks, according to researchers at Israeli security firm Check Point. 

Many of these sites are being used in phishing attacks to grab victims' Zoom usernames and passwords, and similar scams are leveraging rival video-conferencing platforms such as Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.

Over the weekend, online vandals hijacked the graduation ceremony at Oklahoma City University, replacing the Zoom video feed with racist language and symbols. It wasn't immediately clear whether this was a result of regular Zoom-bombing or if the attackers used less well-known methods to disrupt the video feed.

May 8, 2020: Zoom bans free users from tech-support calls

Zoom announced May 7 that due to its technical-support staff being overwhelmed with calls, it would be able to give personal technical assistance only to "owners and administrators" of paid accounts.

In other words, any user, owner or administrator of a free Zoom account, and end users of paid accounts, won't be entitled to human help. Instead, they'll have to rely on the FAQs and how-to's list on the Zoom online resources page.

For now, this provision applies only to May and June 2020. If the coronavirus lockdown last longer than that, Zoom may have to hire more tech-support staffers.

May 7, 2020: Zoom promises to beef up security in agreement with N.Y. attorney general

New York State Attorney General Letitia James' office reached an agreement with Zoom May 7 following an investigation into Zoom's security and privacy practices. 

There isn't a lot of new stuff in the agreement. Most of the NYAG's complaints with Zoom involved issues discussed in this story you're reading. Most of the stipulations Zoom agreed to are things the company is already doing, including making passwords mandatory and using better encryption. 

In the long term, Zoom has to conduct regular code reviews and conduct yearly penetration-testing exercises, in which paid hackers try to break through the company's defenses. 

Only two new things will directly affect consumers. Zoom has to beef up password security by preventing automated password-stuffing attacks (such as by adding CAPTCHAs to login pages) and must automatically reset compromised passwords. 

It also has to update its Acceptable Use policies to ban "abusive conduct include hatred against others based on race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation."

Frankly, these are longstanding standard policies at many other online companies, so we're a little surprised that they weren't already Zoom policies.

May 7, 2020: Zoom buys encryption startup

Zoom is buying the small New York City startup Keybase in a bid to quickly implement true end-to-end encryption for Zoom meetings, Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan announced. The purchase price or other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Keybase makes user-friendly software to easily and securely encrypt messaging and social media posts. 

In March, Zoom had to admit that its touted "end-to-end" encryption was not the real thing because Zoom's own servers are always able to access the contents of meetings. Once Keybase's technology is incorporated, that will no longer always be the case.

May 6, 2020: Meeting passwords and waiting rooms enabled by default

Meeting passwords and waiting rooms will be required by default for all Zoom meetings, free or paid, beginning May 9, Zoom announced. Only hosts will be able to share their screens by default, but like the other settings, that can be changed. 

May 5: Zoom CEO Yuan addresses security, nationality issues

In a company blog post, Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan said the massive increase in Zoom usage since the beginning of the coronavirus lockdown had been "challenging," but also provided "opportunities for us to drive meaningful change and improvement."

Yuan admitted that "we failed to set pre-configured security features for our new customers, especially for schools," referring to meeting passwords and waiting rooms. "Instead, we assumed they would understand our platform like our business customers understand our platform and customize these features themselves."

That resulted in "uninvited, offensive, and sometimes even truly evil people disrupting meetings," Yuan wrote. (Such a person disrupted a Zoom meeting on sexual violence in the Bay Area last week.)

Yuan also addressed rumors about his own, and Zoom's, ties to China. He said he had lived in the U.S. since 1997 and had become a U.S. citizen in 2007, and that Zoom is a fully American company. 

"Similar to many multinational technology companies, Zoom has operations and employees in China. ... operated by subsidiaries of the U.S. parent company," Yuan wrote. "Our operations in China are materially similar to our U.S. peers who also operate and have employees there."

"We have 1 (one) co-located data center in China [that is] run by a leading Australian company and is geofenced," Yuan added. "It exists primarily to satisfy our Fortune 500 customers that have operations or customers in China and want to use our platform to connect with them."

May 4, 2020: Eavesdropping on Zoom meetings

A reporter for London's Financial Times resigned after he was caught crashing internal Zoom meetings at rival London newspapers. 

Mark Di Stefano announced his resignation on Twitter after The Independent documented how Di Stefano had last week joined an Independent staff meeting regarding pay cuts and furloughs, first under his own name, then anonymously. 

Shortly thereafter, the Financial Times ran a story by Di Stefano about The Independent making cutbacks. Di Stefano cited his sources as "people on the call," The Independent said.

The Independent also found that Di Stefano's cellphone had earlier been used to access a Zoom meeting at the Evening Standard, another London newspaper. That meeting was followed by a Financial Times piece about Evening Standard furloughs and pay cuts.

May 1, 2020: Security flaws in other videoconferencing software

Zoom isn't the only video-conferencing platform to have questionable privacy policies, Consumer Reports said in a blog post: Cisco Webex, Microsoft's Teams and Skype, and Google's Duo, Meet and Hangouts do too.

"All three companies can collect data while you're in a videoconference, combine it with information from data brokers and other sources to build consumer profiles, and potentially tap into the videos for purposes like training facial recognition systems," Consumer Reports said. 

Consumer Reports said you should know that everything in a video meeting may be recorded, either by the host or another participant. 

It also recommended dialing into video-conference meetings over the phone, not creating accounts with the services if possible, and using "burner" email addresses otherwise.

April 30, 2020: Zoom caught fibbing again

Zoom stock shares dipped nearly 9% Thursday, April 30, the day the company joined the NASDAQ 100 stock index.

After prodding from reporters at The Verge, Zoom admitted that it did not in fact have a recent peak of 300 million daily users, as stated in a blog post last week. 

Rather, Zoom had a peak of 300 million daily "participants." If you attend more than one Zoom meeting per day, then you're counted as a separate "participant" each time.

"We unintentionally referred to these participants as 'users' and 'people,'" Zoom said in a statement to The Verge. "This was a genuine oversight on our part."

So how many daily users does Zoom now have? The company hasn't said.

April 30, 2020: More malware-embedded Zoom installers

Researchers at Trend Micro spotted another Zoom installer file that had been corrupted with malware. 

In this case, it's spyware that can turn on the webcam, take screenshots and log keystrkes, as well as collecting diagnostic data about the system it's running on. It also installs a fully working version of the Zoom desktop client.

"Since the system downloaded a legitimate Zoom application version (4.6), it won’t make the users suspicious," the Trend Micro team noted in a blog post. "However, the system has already been compromised at this point."

You don't need to install any software on your desktop to run Zoom. But if you must, then get that software only from the official website at https://zoom.us/download. 

April 29, 2020: Zoom a target for foreign hackers

Zoom is a prime target for foreign spies, especially Chinese intelligence operatives, the Department of Homeland Security has warned U.S. government agencies and law-enforcement agencies, according to ABC News.

"Zoom's sudden immense growth and use across both public and private sector entities in combination with its highly publicized cybersecurity issues creates a vulnerable, target-rich environment," the DHS intelligence analysis purportedly says. "Any organization currently using -- or considering using -- Zoom should evaluate the risk of its use."

Foreign spies would be interested in any internet-based communications medium that saw such a steep increase in growth. But the DHS report singled out China as a likely meddler in Zoom security because Zoom has a substantial number of staffers in that country.

"China's access to Zoom servers makes Beijing uniquely positioned to target U.S. public and private sector users," ABC News quoted the DHS report as stating.

However, Zoom in the past week has given paid meeting hosts the option of avoiding Zoom servers in specific regions, including China and North America. Unpaid Zoom hosts will by default use only servers in their home regions. 

A Zoom spokesperson told ABC News that the DHS report was "heavily misinformed" and included "blatant inaccuracies." 

April 28, 2020: Zoom safer to use than Apple's FaceTime?

A new report from Mozilla, the non-profit maker of the Firefox web browser, says that Zoom's privacy and security policies and practices are better than those of Apple FaceTime.

Zoom scores 5/5 on encryption, password strength, updates, bug reporting and privacy, the report says, matching Skype, Signal, Bluejeans and Google's trio of Duo, Hangouts and Meet. 

FaceTime got only 4.5/5 because the Apple video-call service doesn't require the user to log into the app independently.

April 28, 2020: Zoom phishing scam preys on work-from-home fears

A new Zoom phishing scam is sure to get the attention of anyone working from home during the coronavirus lockdown. 

It seems to come from your employer's HR department, and invites you to join a Zoom meeting starting in a few minutes to discuss possible termination of your employment.

If you click on the link in the email to join the meeting, you're taken to a very real-looking Zoom login page. It's fake. If you enter your credentials, then the crooks can take over your Zoom account.

April 27, 2020: Zoom 5.0 has been released

Zoom has finally updated its meeting-client software to version 5.0, announced last week. Here's our guide on how to update to Zoom 5.0. 

The update is not yet available for iOS, as Apple has to vet the software before the new version of the app can be pushed out. We also couldn't see in the Google Play app store as of Monday afternoon Eastern time (April 27), but odds are it will appear soon.

April 24, 2020: Zoom announces it will join the NASDAQ 100 Index

Zoom company stock rose again Friday after the NASDAQ stock exchange announced that Zoom would join the NASDAQ 100 index Thursday, April 30.

No other company may have benefited more from the stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus crisis. It's hard to imagine that Zoom would be joining the NASDAQ 100 if its daily traffic had not soared from 10 million users in December 2019 to 300 million in mid-April.

April 23, 2020: Zoom's stock surges

Despite all the bad news about Zoom, the company's stock price surged on Thursday, gaining 9% after the announcement that the number of daily users had risen to 300 million. 

To put that in perspective, daily usage peaked at 200 million people per day in March, the company said on April 1. In December 2019, Zoom usage peaked at 10 million daily users.

April 22, 2020: Zoom 5.0 announced

In a somewhat misleading press announcement/blog post, Zoom trumpeted the arrival of version 5.0 of its desktop software for Windows, Mac and Linux. 

The new version will include many of the security fixes we've recently seen for the Zoom web interface, including the abilities to kick out Zoom bombers from meetings,  make sure meeting data doesn't go through China, and put everyone waiting for a meeting in a "waiting room." It also adds a security icon to the host screen and better encryption to Zoom meetings. 

We checked the Zoom changelogs and discovered that the update won't be available until Sunday, April 26. 

April 22, 2020: Information scraping with fake Zoom client software

Cisco Talos researchers said Zoom's meeting chat function made it too easy for outsiders to find all Zoom users in an particular organization. 

If you had a valid Zoom account, Cisco Talos explained in a blog post, you could pretend that you worked at any organization and get the full names and chat IDs of every registered Zoom user whose email address used that organization's email domain. 

You would not have to verify that you worked there, and you wouldn't even need to be in a Zoom meeting to get the information.

That information "could be leveraged to disclose further contact information including the user's email address, phone number and any other information that is present in their vCard," or digital business card, Cisco Talos wrote.

"This vulnerability could be exploited by a spear-phishing attack against known individuals with an organization in order to dump the email addresses of all the Zoom users within the organization," the Cisco Talos post said. "Users who have recently had to install new software in order to set-up remote working may be particularly susceptible to socially-engineered emails that purport to instruct users to install a new or updated trojan horse 'Zoom client'."

Fortunately, Zoom has fixed this issue, which lay entirely on the server side.

STATUS: Fixed.

April 21, 2020: New updates

In a blog post April 20, Zoom said the option of excluding certain countries from call routing was now live. This will let Zoom meeting administrators avoid having meeting data routed through Zoom servers in China, the U.S., or seven other regions and countries.

New updates to the Zoom platform for the web interface rolled out April 19 include masking some participant personal information, such as email addresses or phone numbers, during meetings. Another change is that users who share the same email domain will no longer be able to search for each other by name. 

April 20, 2020: Dropbox created its own bug bounty program for Zoom

The New York Times reported that Dropbox executives were so concerned about security flaws in Zoom that in 2018 Dropbox created its own secret bug-bounty program for Zoom flaws. 

In other words, Dropbox would pay hackers for security vulnerabilities they found in Zoom. (Dropbox staffers used Zoom regularly, and Dropbox was an investor in Zoom.) The Times reported that Dropbox would confirm the flaws, then pass them along to Zoom so that Zoom could fix them. 

April 17, 2020: Finding Zoom meeting recordings online is easy (part 2)

Zoom-meeting video recordings saved on Zoom's cloud servers can be easily discovered and often viewed, a security researcher told Cnet.

Phil Guimond noticed that online recordings of Zoom meetings have a predictable URL structure and are thus easy to find. (The Washington Post reported last week on a similar issue with Zoom recordings that had been uploaded by users to third-party cloud servers. In those cases, the file names of meeting recordings followed a predictable pattern.) 

Until Zoom pushed out a series of updates this past Tuesday, Zoom meeting recordings were not required to be password-protected.

Guimond built a simple tool that automatically searches for Zoom meeting recordings and tries to open them. 

If a meeting has a password, his tool tries to brute-force access by running through millions of possible passwords. If a meeting recording is viewable, so is the Zoom meeting ID, and the attacker might be able to access future recurring meetings.

To defeat Guimond's automated tool, Zoom added a Captcha challenge, which forces the would-be meeting-recording watcher to prove they're a human. But, Guimond said, the URL pattern is still the same, and attackers could still try to open each generated result manually.

STATUS: Mitigated with additional obstacles against attack, but not really fixed. 

April 16, 2020: Zoom revamps its bug bounty program

Zoom announced it was hiring Luta Security, a consulting firm headed by Katie Moussouris, to revamp Zoom's "bug bounty" program, which pays hackers to find software flaws. 

Moussouris set up the first bug-bounty programs at Microsoft and the Pentagon. In her own blog post, she announced that Zoom was bringing in other well-regarded information-security firms and researchers to improve its security.

In its weekly webinar, according to ZDNet, Zoom also said it would also let meeting hosts report abusive users, and newly hired security consultant Alex Stamos said Zoom would be switching to a more robust encryption standard after Zoom's existing encryption was found to be lacking.

In other news, a congressman has complained that a congressional briefing held over Zoom on April 3 was "zoom-bombed" at least three times. 

April 15, 2020: Bank official warns against the dangers of remote meetings

The head of Standard Chartered, a London-based multinational bank, has warned employees to not use Zoom or Google Hangouts for remote meetings, citing security concerns, according to Reuters. 

Standard Chartered primarily uses the rival Blue Jeans video-conferencing platform, according to two bank staffers who spoke anonymously.

Last year, Standard Chartered agreed to pay British and American regulators $1.1 billion after admitting the bank violated trade sanctions on Iran.

April 15, 2020: Zoom zero-day exploits on sale for $500,000

Hackers are apparently offering to sell two "zero-day" exploits in Zoom to the highest bidder, Vice reports.

Zero-days are hacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities the software maker doesn't know about, and which users have little or no defense against. 

Sources who told Vice about the zero-days said one exploit is for Windows and lets a remote attacker get full control of a target's computer. The catch is that the attacker and the target have to be on the same Zoom call. Its asking price is $500,000.

"I think it's just kids who hope to make a bang," one unnamed source told Vice.

The other zero-day is said to be for macOS and to be less serious.

STATUS: Apparently unfixed.

April 14, 2020: Paid users can choose their data region

Zoom announced April 13 that users of paid Zoom accounts would be able to choose through which region of the world their data would be routed: Australia, Canada, China, Europe, India, Japan/Hong Kong, Latin America or the United States.

This is a reaction to the discovery earlier in April that many Zoom meetings hosted by and involving U.S. residents had been routed through servers based in China, a country that retains the right to see anything happening on a domestically located server without a warrant.

Users of Zoom's free service will have their data handled only by servers in their regions.

STATUS: This option is now available for paid Zoom users who use the web interface rather than the desktop software. The Zoom desktop software for Windows, Mac and Linux will be getting this April 26.

Open/unresolved issues

More than 500,000 Zoom accounts up for grabs

Usernames and passwords for more than 500,000 Zoom accounts are being sold or given away in criminal marketplaces. 

These accounts were not compromised as the result of a Zoom data breach, but instead through credential stuffing. That's when criminals try to unlock accounts by re-using credentials from accounts compromised in previous data breaches. It works only if an account holder uses the same password for more than one account.

STATUS: Unknown, but this isn't Zoom's fault. 

2,300 sets of Zoom login credentials found online

Researchers from IngSights discovered a set of 2,300 Zoom login credentials being shared in a criminal online forum. 

"Aside from personal accounts, there were many corporate accounts belonging to banks, consultancy companies, educational facilities, healthcare providers, and software vendors, amongst others," IntSight's Etay Maor wrote in a blog post April 10. 

"While some of the accounts 'only' included an email and password, others included meeting IDs, names and host keys," Maor wrote.

Maor told Threatpost it didn't seem like the credentials came from a Zoom data breach, given their relatively small number. He theorized that they came from "small lists and databases kept by other companies/agencies." 

It's also possible that some of the credentials were the result of "credential stuffing." That's the (largely) automated process by which criminals try to log into websites by cycling through likely email addresses and likely passwords, and then harvest whatever yields a positive result.

STATUS: Unknown. This likely isn't a Zoom issue per se.

Zoom 'zero-day' exploits

Information-security researchers know of several Zoom "zero-day" exploits, according to Vice. Zero-days are exploits for software vulnerabilities that the software maker doesn't know about and hasn't fixed, and hence has "zero days" to prepare before the exploits appear.

However, one Vice source implied that other video-conferencing solutions also had security flaws. Another source said that Zoom zero-days weren't selling for much money due to lack of demand.

STATUS: Unresolved until some of these flaws come to light.

Zoom compromised accounts traded online

Criminals are trading compromised Zoom accounts on the "dark web," Yahoo News reported. 

This information apparently came from Israeli cybersecurity firm Sixgill, which specializes in monitoring underground online-criminal activity. We weren't able to find any mention of the findings on the Sixgill website.

Sixgill told Yahoo it had spotted 352 compromised Zoom accounts that included meeting IDs, email addresses, passwords and host keys. Some of the accounts belonged to schools, and one each to a small business and a large healthcare provider, but most were personal.

STATUS: Not really a bug, but definitely worth worrying about. If you have a Zoom account, make sure its password isn't the same as the password for any other account you have.

Zoom installer bundled with malware

Researchers at Trend Micro discovered a version of the Zoom installer that has been bundled with cryptocurrency-mining malware, i.e. a coin-miner. 

The Zoom installer will put Zoom version 4.4.0.0 on your Windows PC, but it comes with a coin-miner that Trend Micro has given the catchy name Trojan.Win32.MOOZ.THCCABO. (By the way, the latest Zoom client software for Windows is up to version 4.6.9, and you should get it only from here.)

The coin-miner will ramp up your PC's central processor unit, and its graphics card if there is one, to solve mathematical problems in order to generate new units of cryptocurrency. You'll notice this if you fans suddenly speed up or if Windows Task Manager (hit Ctrl + Shift + Esc) shows unexpectedly heavy CPU/GPU use.

To avoid getting hit with this malware, make sure you're running one of the best antivirus programs, and don't click on any links in emails, social media posts or pop-up messages that promise to install Zoom on your machine. 

STATUS: Open, but this isn't Zoom's problem to fix. It can't stop other people from copying and redistributing its installation software.

Zoom encryption not what it claims to be

Not only does Zoom mislead users about its "end-to-end encryption" (see further down), but its seems to be flat-out, um, not telling the truth about the quality of its encryption algorithm. 

Zoom says it use AES-256 encryption to encode video and audio data traveling between Zoom servers and Zoom clients (i.e., you and me). But researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, in a report posted April 3, found that Zoom actually uses the somewhat weaker AES-128 algorithm. 

Even worse, Zoom uses an in-house implementation of encryption algorithm that preserves patterns from the original file. It's as if someone drew a red circle on a gray wall, and then a censor painted over the red circle with a while circle. You're not seeing the original message, but the shape is still there. 

"We discourage the use of Zoom at this time for use cases that require strong privacy and confidentiality," the Citizen Lab report says, such as "governments worried about espionage, businesses concerned about cybercrime and industrial espionage, healthcare providers handling sensitive patient information" and "activists, lawyers, and journalists working on sensitive topics."

STATUS: Unresolved. In a blog post April 3, Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan acknowledged the encryption issue but said only that "we recognize that we can do better with our encryption design" and "we expect to have more to share on this front in the coming days."

In Zoom's announcement of the upcoming April 26 desktop-software update, Zoom said it would be upgrading the encryption implementation to a better format for all users by May 30.

Zoom software can be easily corrupted

Good software has built-in anti-tampering mechanisms to make sure that applications don't run code that's been altered by a third party. 

Zoom has such anti-tampering mechanisms in place, which is good. But those anti-tampering mechanisms themselves are not protected from tampering, said a British computer student who calls himself "Lloyd" in a blog post April 3. 

Needless to say, that's bad. Lloyd showed how Zoom's anti-tampering mechanism can easily be disabled, or even replaced with a malicious version that hijacks the application.

If you're reading this with a working knowledge of how Windows software works, this is a pretty damning passage: "This DLL can be trivially unloaded, rendering the anti-tampering mechanism null and void. The DLL is not pinned, meaning an attacker from a 3rd party process could simply inject a remote thread."

In other words, malware already present on a computer could use Zoom's own anti-tampering mechanism to tamper with Zoom. Criminals could also create fully working versions of Zoom that have been altered to perform malicious acts.

STATUS: Unresolved.

Zoom bombing

Anyone can "bomb" a public Zoom meeting if they know the meeting number, and then use the file-share photo to post shocking images, or make annoying sounds in the audio. The FBI even warned about it a few days ago.

The host of the Zoom meeting can mute or even kick out troublemakers, but they can come right back with new user IDs. The best way to avoid Zoom bombing is to not share Zoom meeting numbers with anyone but the intended participants. You can also require participants to use a password to log into the meeting.

On April 3, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said that "anyone who hacks into a teleconference can be charged with state or federal crimes." It's not clear whether that applies only to eastern Michigan.

STATUS: There are easy ways to avoid Zoom bombing, which we go through here.

Leaks of email addresses and profile photos

Zoom automatically puts everyone sharing the same email domain into a "company" folder where they can see each other's information. 

Exceptions are made for people using large webmail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or Outlook.com, but not apparently for smaller webmail providers that Zoom might not know about. 

Several Dutch Zoom users who use ISP-provided email addresses suddenly found that they were in the same "company" with dozens of strangers -- and could see their email addresses, user names and user photos.

STATUS: Unresolved, but an April 19 Zoom software update for Zoom web-interface users makes sure users on the same email domain can no longer automatically search for each other by name. The Zoom desktop client software will get similar fixes April 26.

Sharing of personal data with advertisers

Several privacy experts, some working for Consumer Reports, pored over Zoom's privacy policy and found that it apparently gave Zoom the right to use Zoom users' personal data and to share it with third-party marketers.

Following a Consumer Reports blog post, Zoom quickly rewrote its privacy policy, stripping out the most disturbing passages and asserting that "we do not sell your personal data."

STATUS: Unknown. We don't know the details of Zoom's business dealings with third-party advertisers.

You can 'war drive' to find open Zoom meetings

You can find open Zoom meetings by rapidly cycling through possible Zoom meeting IDs, a security researcher told independent security blogger Brian Krebs. 

The researcher got past Zoom's meeting-scan blocker by running queries through Tor, which randomized his IP address. It's a variation on "war driving" by randomly dialing telephone numbers to find open modems in the dial-up days.

The researcher told Krebs that he could find about 100 open Zoom meetings every hour with the tool, and that "having a password enabled on the [Zoom] meeting is the only thing that defeats it."

STATUS: Unknown.

Zoom meeting chats don't stay private

Two Twitter users pointed out that if you're in a Zoom meeting and use a private window in the meeting's chat app to communicate privately with another person in the meeting, that conversation will be visible in the end-of-meeting transcript the host receives.

STATUS: Unknown.

Resolved/fixed issues

Zoom flaw allowed account hijacking

A Kurdish security researcher said Zoom paid him a bug bounty -- a reward for finding a serious flaw -- for finding how to hijack a Zoom account if the account holder's email address was known or guessed.

The researcher, who calls himself "s3c" but whose real name may be Yusuf Abdulla, said if he tried to log into Zoom with a Facebook account, Zoom would ask for the email address associated with that Facebook account. Then Zoom would open a new webpage notifying him that a confirmation email message had been sent to that email address.

The URL of the notification webpage would have a unique identification tag in the address bar. As an example that's much shorter than the real thing, let's say it's "zoom.com/signup/123456XYZ".

When s3c received and opened the confirmation email message sent by Zoom, he clicked on the confirmation button in the body of the message. This took him to yet another webpage that confirmed his email address was now associated with a new account. So far, so good.

But then s3c noticed that the unique identification tag in the Zoom confirmation webpage's URL was identical to the first ID tag. Let's use the example "zoom.com/confirmation/123456XYZ".

The matching ID tags, one used before confirmation and the other after confirmation, meant that s3c could have avoided receiving the confirmation email, and clicking on the confirmation button, altogether. 

In fact, he could have entered ANY email address -- yours, mine or billgates@gmail.com -- into the original signup form. Then he could have copied the ID tag from the resulting Zoom notification page and pasted the ID tag into an already existing Zoom account-confirmation page. 

Boom, he'd have access to any Zoom account created using the targeted email address. 

"Even if you already linked your account with a Facebook account Zoom automatically unlink it and link it with the attacker Facebook account," s3c wrote in his imperfect English.

And because Zoom lets anyone using a company email address view all other users signed up with the same email domain, e.g. "company.com", s3c could have leveraged this method to steal ALL of a given company's Zoom accounts.

"So if an attacker create an account with email address attacker@companyname.com and verify it with this bug," s3c wrote, "the attacker can view all emails that created with *@companyname.com in Zoom app in Company contacts so that means the attacker can hack all accounts of the company."

Zoom is fortunate that s3c is one of the good guys and didn't disclose this flaw publicly before Zoom could fix it. But it's such a simple flaw that it's hard to imagine no one else noticed it before.

STATUS: Fixed, thank God.

Zoom removes meeting IDs from screens

Zoom has released updates for its Windows, macOS and Linux desktop client software so that meeting IDs will not display onscreen during meetings. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accidentally displayed a Zoom meeting ID in a tweet, and the Belgian cabinet made a similar mistake.

'Potential security vulnerability' with Zoom file sharing

In an "ask me anything" webinar in early April, Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan said that Zoom had discovered "a potential security vulnerability with file sharing, so we disabled that feature."

Until this week, participants in a Zoom meeting could share files with each other using the meeting's chat function.

STATUS: Fixed.

Zoom cryptographic keys issued by Chinese servers

Those AES128 encryption keys are issued to Zoom clients by Zoom servers, which is all well and good, except that the Citizen Lab found several Zoom servers in China issuing keys to Zoom users even when all participants in a meeting were in North America. 

Since Zoom servers can decrypt Zoom meetings, and Chinese authorities can compel operators of Chinese servers to hand over data, the implication is that the Chinese government might be able to see your Zoom meetings. 

That's got to be bad news for the British government, which has held at least one Cabinet meeting over Zoom.

STATUS: Apparently fixed. In a blog post April 3, Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan responded to the Citizen Lab report by saying that "it is possible certain meetings were allowed to connect to systems in China, where they should not have been able to connect. We have since corrected this."

Security flaw with Zoom meeting waiting rooms

Zoom advises meeting hosts to set up "waiting rooms" to avoid "Zoom bombing." A waiting room essentially keeps participants on hold until a host lets them in, either all at once or one at a time. 

The Citizen Lab said it found a serious security issue with Zoom waiting rooms, and advised hosts and participants to not use them for now. The Citizen Lab is not disclosing the details yet, but has told Zoom of the flaw.

"We advise Zoom users who desire confidentiality to not use Zoom Waiting Rooms," the Citizen Lab said in its report. "Instead, we encourage users to use Zoom’s password feature."

STATUS: Fixed. In a follow-up to their initial report. the Citizen Lab researchers disclosed that uninvited attendees to a meeting could nonetheless get the meeting's encryption key from the waiting room. 

"On April 7, Zoom reported to us that they had implemented a server-side fix for the issue," the researchers said.

Windows password stealing

Zoom meetings have side chats in which participants can sent text-based messages and post web links. 

But according to Twitter user @_g0dmode and Anglo-American cybersecurity training firm Hacker House, Zoom until the end of March made no distinction between regular web addresses and a different kind of remote networking link called a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path. That left Zoom chats vulnerable to attack.

If a malicious Zoom bomber slipped a UNC path to a remote server that he controlled into a Zoom meeting chat, an unwitting participant could click on it. 

The participant's Windows computer would then try to reach out to the hacker's remote server specified in the path and automatically try to log into it using the user's Windows username and password. 

The hacker could capture the password "hash" and decrypt it, giving him access to the Zoom user's Windows account.

STATUS: Yuan's blog post says Zoom has now fixed this problem.

Windows malware injection

Mohamed A. Baset of security firm Seekurity said on Twitter that the same filepath flaw also would let a hacker insert a UNC path to a remote executable file into a Zoom meeting chatroom. 

If a Zoom user running Windows clicked on it, a video posted by Baset showed, the user's computer would try to load and run the software. The victim would be prompted to authorize the software to run, which will stop some hacking attempts but not all.

STATUS: If the UNC filepath issue is fixed, then this should be as well.

iOS profile sharing

Until late March, Zoom sent iOS user profiles to Facebook as part of the "log in with Facebook" feature in the iPhone and iPad Zoom apps. After Vice News exposed the practice, Zoom said it hadn't been aware of the profile-sharing and updated the iOS apps to fix this.

STATUS: Fixed.

Malware-like behavior on Macs

We learned last summer that Zoom used hacker-like methods to bypass normal macOS security precautions. We thought that problem had been fixed then, along with the security flaw it created. 

But a series of tweets March 30 from security researcher Felix Seele, who noticed that Zoom installed itself on his Mac without the usual user authorizations, revealed that there was still an issue.

"They (ab)use preinstallation scripts, manually unpack the app using a bundled 7zip and install it to /Applications if the current user is in the admin group (no root needed)," Seele wrote. 

"The application is installed without the user giving his final consent and a highly misleading prompt is used to gain root privileges. The same tricks that are being used by macOS malware." (Seele elaborated in a more user-friendly blog post here.)

Zoom founder and CEO Eric S. Yuan tweeted a friendly response.

"To join a meeting from a Mac is not easy, that is why this method is used by Zoom and others," Yuan wrote. "Your point is well taken and we will continue to improve."

UPDATE: In a new tweet April 2, Seele said Zoom had released a new version of the Zoom client for macOS that "completely removes the questionable 'preinstall'-technique and the faked password prompt."

"I must say that I am impressed. That was a swift and comprehensive reaction. Good work, @zoom_us!" Seele added.

STATUS: Fixed.

A backdoor for Mac malware

Other people could use Zoom's dodgy Mac installation methods, renowned Mac hacker Patrick Wardle said in a blog post March 30.

Wardle demonstrated how a local attacker -- such as a malicious human or already-installed malware -- could use Zoom's formerly magical powers of unauthorized installation to "escalate privileges" and gain total control over the machine without knowing the administrator password.  

Wardle also showed that a malicious script installed into the Zoom Mac client could give any piece of malware Zoom's webcam and microphone privileges, which do not prompt the user for authorization and could turn any Mac with Zoom installed into a potential spying device.

"This affords malware the ability to record all Zoom meetings, or simply spawn Zoom in the background to access the mic and webcam at arbitrary times," Wardle wrote.

STATUS: Yuan's blog post says Zoom has fixed these flaws.

Other issues

Zoom pledges to fix flaws

In a blog post April 1, Zoom CEO and founder Eric S. Yuan acknowledged Zoom's growing pains and pledged that regular development of the Zoom platform would be put on hold while the company worked to fix security and privacy issues.

"We recognize that we have fallen short of the community's -- and our own -- privacy and security expectations," Yuan wrote, explaining that Zoom had been developed for large businesses with in-house IT staffers who could set up and run the software.

"We now have a much broader set of users who are utilizing our product in a myriad of unexpected ways, presenting us with challenges we did not anticipate when the platform was conceived," he said. "These new, mostly consumer use cases have helped us uncover unforeseen issues with our platform. Dedicated journalists and security researchers have also helped to identify pre-existing ones."

To deal with these issues, Yuan wrote, Zoom would be "enacting a feature freeze, effectively immediately, and shifting all our engineering resources to focus on our biggest trust, safety, and privacy issues."

Among other things, Zoom would also be "conducting a comprehensive review with third-party experts and representative users to understand and ensure the security of all of our new consumer use cases."

Zoom now requires passwords by default for most Zoom meetings, although meetings hosts can turn that feature off. Passwords are the easiest way to stop Zoom bombing. 

And on April 8, former Facebook and Yahoo chief security officer Alex Stamos said he would be working with Zoom to improve its security and privacy. Stamos is now an adjunct professor at Stanford and is highly regarded within the information-security community.

Phony end-to-end encryption

Zoom claims its meetings use "end-to-end encryption" if every participant calls in from a computer or a Zoom mobile app instead of over the phone. But under pressure from The Intercept, a Zoom representative admitted that Zoom's definitions of "end-to-end" and "endpoint" are not the same as everyone else's.

"When we use the phrase 'End to End'," a Zoom spokeperson told The Intercept, "it is in reference to the connection being encrypted from Zoom end point to Zoom end point." 

Sound good, but the spokesperson clarified that he counted a Zoom server as an endpoint. 

Every other company considers an endpoint to be a user device -- a desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet -- but not a server. And every other company takes "end-to-end encryption" to mean that servers that relay messages from one endpoint to another can't decrypt the messages.

When you send an Apple Message from your iPhone to another iPhone user, Apple's servers help the message get from one place to another, but they can't read the content.

Not so with Zoom. It can see whatever is going on in its meetings, and sometimes it  may have to in order to make sure everything works properly. Just don't believe the implication that it can't.

UPDATE: In a blog post April 1, Zoom Chief Product Officer Oded Gal wrote that "we want to start by apologizing for the confusion we have caused by incorrectly suggesting that Zoom meetings were capable of using end-to-end encryption. "

"We recognize that there is a discrepancy between the commonly accepted definition of end-to-end encryption and how we were using it," he wrote.

Gal assured users that all data sent and received by Zoom client applications (but not regular phone lines, business conferencing systems or, presumably, browser interfaces) is indeed encrypted and that Zoom servers or staffers "do not decrypt it at any point before it reaches the receiving clients."

However, Gal added, "Zoom currently maintains the key management system for these systems in the cloud" but has "implemented robust and validated internal controls to prevent unauthorized access to any content that users share during meetings."

The implication is that Zoom doesn't decrypt user transmissions by choice. But because it holds the encryption keys, Zoom could if it had to, such as if it were presented with a warrant or a U.S. National Security Letter (essentially a secret warrant). 

For those worried about government snooping, Gal wrote that "Zoom has never built a mechanism to decrypt live meetings for lawful intercept purposes, nor do we have means to insert our employees or others into meetings without being reflected in the participant list."

He added that companies and other enterprises would soon be able to handle their own encryption process.

"A solution will be available later this year to allow organizations to leverage Zoom’s cloud infrastructure but host the key management system within their environment."

STATUS: This is an issue of misleading advertising rather than an actual software flaw. We hope Zoom stops using the term "end-to-end encryption" incorrectly, but just keep in mind that you won't be getting the real thing with Zoom until it fully implements the technology it's buying with Keybase.

Zoom meeting recordings can be found online

Privacy researcher Patrick Jackson noticed that Zoom meeting recordings saved to the host's computer generally get a certain type of file name. 

So he searched unprotected cloud servers to see if anyone had uploaded Zoom recordings and found more than 15,000 unprotected examples, according to The Washington Post. Jackson also found some recorded Zoom meetings on YouTube and Vimeo.

This isn't really Zoom's fault. It's up to the host to decide whether to record a meeting, and Zoom gives paying customers the option to store recordings on Zoom's own servers. It's also up to the host to decide to change the recording's file name.

If you host a Zoom meeting and decide to record it, then make sure you change the default file name after you're done.

STATUS: This is not really Zoom's problem, to be honest.

The best free Zoom backgrounds can turn your video calls into a visual party. Being able to add virtual backgrounds is one of the Zoom’s best features as instead of seeing your messy office or bedroom, your colleagues or friends can see you hanging out in the Friends apartment, cruising on the Millennium Falcon or inserted into the latest meme.

If you’re not sure how to get this working, read our guide on how to change your Zoom background and then try out the various settings.

Over the last few years, everyone has used Zoom as its one of the best video chat apps to call into meetings while working from home or to connect with long-distance family and friends. One of Zoom’s most used features is a setting that lets you add a virtual background which swaps out the real-life background with a video or image. The best part, you don’t need a green screen to do so.

The virtual background feature is also a fun way to mix up your Zoom calls as well as one of the main ways that Zoom stands out from the best Zoom alternatives.

Although Zoom offers a few different default backgrounds, you can personalize your appearance further by downloading free Zoom backgrounds. People are using all kinds of images and videos to help liven up their calls, including popular memes, famous TV show sets and gorgeous landscapes. You can even make it look like you’re in a regular office conference room.

These are some of our favorite free Zoom backgrounds.

Free Zoom background: Star Wars

With Obi-Wan Kenobi and Andor hitting hyperdrive this summer, why not dial into your Zoom meeting from a galaxy far, far away? StarWars.com has created a bunch of free Zoom backgrounds so you can look like you're floating in Cloud City, in the control room of the Death Star, strolling around Tatooine or braving the icy weather of Hoth, among many choices.

Free Zoom background: Animal Crossing New Horizons

You already spend most of your free time trading turnips on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Now, you can port into the ACNH world on Zoom, with four spiffy backgrounds provided by Nintendo. Dial in from town square or the Resident Services building!

Free Zoom background: Marvel movies

Video call backgrounds, assemble! Yes, Marvel got into the free Zoom backgrounds universe, tweeting out several images from MCU films including Black Panther, Iron Man and Doctor Strange.

Free Zoom background: The Simpsons couch

A lot of different brands and TV shows have been sharing free Zoom backgrounds. Fox tweeted out this image of The Simpsons couch in the animated show's living room. 

Free Zoom background: Seinfeld's apartment

E-interior design service Modsy has recreated famous pop culture homes, like this re-creation of Jerry Seinfeld's apartment. Download the high-res version.

Free Zoom background: Game of Thrones Iron Throne

No need to battle the Lannisters, Starks, Baratheons or any other noble house of Westeros for the Iron Throne — you can just plop yourself on it via a free Zoom background. 

Free Zoom background: Giphy backdrops

Zoom backgrounds don't have to be a static image. You can use a GIF, like this pre-made collection from Giphy. Choose to sit in front of a seaside landscape with a moving sailboat or a bubbling waterfall. Our favorite is the city with floating animals like jellyfish and a whale.

Free Zoom background: The Walking Dead

The world still feels eerily similar to The Walking Dead with all the turmoil going on. But unlike the zombie drama, which tweeted a few free Zoom backgrounds, we don't have to worry about brain-eating monsters coming for us (probably?). 

Free Zoom background: Friends, Monica's apartment

Try this Modsy recreation of Monica's apartment from Friends and you can pretend like you live in a comically large NYC pad. Download the high-res version.

Free Zoom background: Netflix shows

Netflix tweeted several free Zoom backgrounds, including one of the plexiglass cage in You, Lara Jean Covey's bedroom in To All the Boys I've Loved Before and a pod from the dating series Love Is Blind.

Free Zoom background: This is fine

ZoomMeetingBackgrounds.com offers more than 30 free virtual backgrounds to use on Zoom. They are categorized into memes, funny, movie caps, landscapes and videos. 

The best Zoom background on the site has to be KC Green's "This is fine" dog meme. Seems about right for these times. 

Free Zoom background: IKEA living

Maybe your apartment is full of IKEA furniture, but let's be honest, it probably doesn't look as put-together or lifestyle porn-like as these free IKEA Zoom backgrounds. The ready-to-assemble home furnishings store offers several options that you can use for celebrations and romantic dates, but also if you just want it to look like your home office or bedroom is gorgeously decorated.

Free Zoom background: Conference call bingo

Canva is an online design tool that offers free virtual background templates that you can customize. Our favorite is this conference call bingo sheet. 

Free Zoom background: Name placard

You can also opt for a simpler route on Canva, like making a name placard. 

Free Zoom background: Conference room

Unsplash is a library of free, high-quality stock images. They offer a range of potential backgrounds, you can appear as if you're in a real conference room.

Free Zoom background: On the road

Unsplash's collection of free Zoom backgrounds also features iconic landmarks and beautiful landscapes, like this one of a road in Iceland. 

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Companies might be big on return to work but remote collaboration remains important as people still work from home or different parts of the world. Video calling apps remain essential tools in the remote work space with each competing to get the best features on their own app and add more users. Google Meet is now taking on the competition by introducing one feature that is exactly like one of Zoom’s most useful shortcuts.

Google Meet will soon let you unmute yourself by holding down on the space bar and releasing it to mute again. In an update on the Google blog, the company mentions that people will be able to quickly participate in meetings this way and will even help in situations where users forget to mute themselves again after speaking. The feature is similar to how a walkie-talkie works and will save users an additional click to mute and unmute themselves manually on the app. 

The unmute feature is not only found on Zoom (called “push-to-talk”), but also on Cisco Webex. Microsoft Teams has a similar function but with the Ctrl + Spacebar key. 

Google says it will start rolling out the update to all Workspace users on September 9 but it could take up to 15 days for the feature to show up for everyone. The feature will not be turned on automatically and will have to be enabled from Google Meet’s settings.

Notably, Google has been introducing many new features for Meet. At Google I/O 2022 back in May, the tech giant announced significant upgrades to Meet, including automatic lighting, portrait adjustment for faces, de-reverberation and noise cancellation. Another Google Meet upgrade is integration with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.

More recently, the company has introduced the ability to toggle between mute and unmute with third-party hardware like headsets, mics and other USB peripheral devices. Ending or starting a Google Meet meeting might also get integration with hardware in the future.

This week Google also said they are updating how “Hey Google” voice control works for Google Meet hardware. The update mentions, “the Google assistant will only be active when a device is not in a meeting and within 10 minutes of an upcoming meeting” to avoid accidental activation of Assistant during calls.

However, the tech giant has taken a confusing approach to merge its Duo app with Meet on phones. As a result, currently, there are two Meet apps — one that combines Duo and Meet and the Google Meet original app.

When I checked Apple's App Store, I found one app called Google Meet with a green icon and one called Google Duo with Google Meet’s web icon, leaving me completely perplexed. We will have to see what route Google takes to sort out its video app confusion in the future.

A PSA for Mac owners who use Zoom for their meetings and family video calls: update your software right away. The company has acted quickly to patch a serious security weakness that could allow a hacker to take control of macOS, letting them edit, add or even delete files at will.

The exploit is blocked in version 5.11.5 of the Zoom app for macOS, and affected users should make the update immediately. The vulnerability got a CVSS score of 8.8 on the company’s security bulletin, denoting it of “high” severity.

It marks a quick turnaround for Zoom’s developers, as the bug was only exposed at the DEF CON hacking conference on Friday (August 12). The security researcher who found the weakness, Patrick Wardle, was certainly impressed, tweeting: “Mahalos to @Zoom for the (incredibly) quick fix!”

The Verge, which attended the event last week, has more details on the now-defanged vulnerability, which targeted the installer of the Zoom application. Wardle found that while the installer required a Mac owner to enter a password for installations, the auto-update function ran in the background with superuser privileges.

The updater would check that updates officially distributed by the developers had been cryptographically signed. But Wardle discovered that feeding the updater any file with the same credentials would fool it, allowing malicious types to substitute malware of their choosing to run on a Mac with Zoom open.

That loophole is now, thankfully, closed. Wardle followed up on his congratulatory tweet by explaining exactly how Zoom had made the fix. 

“Reversing the patch, we see the Zoom installer now invokes lchown to update the permissions of the update .pkg, thus preventing malicious subversions,” he explained — accompanied with a padlock and thumbs up emoji, suggesting this gets the Wardle seal of approval.

To update Zoom on your Mac, load it up and then click zoom.us (or whatever your geographical equivalent is) from the menu bar at the top of the screen. Select “Check for updates” and Zoom should pop open a window giving you the details of what’s included. Click “Update” and your download will begin.

Once you're all updated, don't forget to check out our guides to the best free Zoom backgrounds, how to get Snapchat filters on Zoom and our overall page on how to use Zoom.

There are a lot of Zoom alternatives out there, but to take on the king, you need three key things: ease of use, compatibility with as many platforms as possible, and security.

Even though lockdown video calls are a thing of the past, those working from home still rely on these services to interact with their coworkers. They’re still a great way to keep in touch with friends and family that live far away as well.

Over the course of the last few years, millions of people have used Zoom, one of the best video chat apps and video conferencing software solutions during the pandemic. However, other video calling services like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Skype have regularly added new features and functionality to keep up with Zoom. If you’re looking for the right Zoom alternative for your video conferencing needs, here are our top choices. 

The best Zoom alternatives you can download and use today

The best overall Zoom alternative

Google Meet (free and paid)

Google Meet is the most well-known and widely used Zoom alternative. Meet was previously only available to paying G-suite customers, but the company added a free tier back in 2021. You can hold video calls with up to 250 participants, hold presentations and record meetings and save them to Drive. You can also easily send a meeting link to participants outside of your company. 

Google has also added more Zoom-like features to Meet, like a grid view, custom backgrounds and fun filters. And now Meet is integrated with Gmail, so you can start a video call right from the left column of your email browser window. Google has plans for further upgrades down the road.

Go to Google Meet

The best Zoom alternative for business

Microsoft Teams (paid and free)

Microsoft Teams allows paid users to host video meetings for up to 300 people. Unlike the Microsoft-owned Skype, Teams does offer standard video conferencing tools, like screen sharing and the ability to record meetings. Teams is included with two different Office 365 plans, which also provide Office apps, 1 TB of OneDrive storage and more. 

There's also a free version of Teams, though it comes with fewer features than the paid version. But you're in luck, since Microsoft rolled out a six-month free trial of paid plants to meet the high demand caused by the pandemic. 

Microsoft Teams is free for six months and paid plans start at $5 per user per month.

The best Zoom alternative for quick calls

Skype (free)

The popular video chat software Skype is well-known and widely used, and its new Skype Meet Now feature is here to challenge Zoom. Meetings can hold up to 50 users, and users no longer need an account to sign in, just a link. Check out our Skype vs Zoom face-off for more details.

There is a text chat window, but otherwise, Skype doesn't have the meeting organization tools that the other Zoom alternatives have. But it's free and can be used on the web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. 

Download Skype for free.

The best social media Zoom alternative

Facebook Messenger Rooms (free)

Facebook is never one to cede digital territory, so it's beefing up its video chat options with Messenger Rooms. The new feature allows Facebook members to create public or private video chatrooms that can hold up to 50 people for an unlimited amount of time. By comparison, free Zoom calls can hold up to 100 participants for 40 minutes. In a very rare move, Facebook is allowing people without accounts to join a Messenger Room via a link.

Participants can use Facebook's augmented reality filters, sort of like Snapchat filters. Other features can brighten dark rooms and touch up your appearance. Room calls are not end-to-end encrypted, but Facebook says it will not listen in on any calls. And room creators can remove participants at any time.  

Go to Facebook Messenger

The best Zoom alternative for gaming

Discord (free)

If you want a free Zoom alternative, look into Discord. The communication app is popular with gamers, but can be used by anyone looking for encrypted chat, messaging and video calls. Users set up a dedicated "server," which can be organized  into rooms (similar to Slack) that host video and text-based chats.

Discord has also raised the limit for Go Live video calls from 10 users to 50. And the app is available on most web browsers, as well as Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. 

Download Discord for free.

The best Zoom alternative for big business

GoTo Meeting (paid)

One of the first video conferencing services out there, GoToMeeting is a feature-packed Zoom alternative. The entry-level plan allows for 150 participants, while the enterprise plan can include up to 3,000. 

GoToMeeting offers all the standard tools, like the ability to record meetings and share your screen. You can also have multiple meeting facilitators. And the service is accessible on web browsers, Mac, PC, Linux, iOS and Android. 

GoToMeeting pricing starts at $12 per month.

For all their usefulness — especially during the pandemic, there hasn’t been a ton of innovation around the best webcams. While their resolution has increased and their price has gone down, pretty much every model is a small box that fits on top of your monitor. 

The Insta360 Link ($299, though it can sometimes be found for as low as $249) is the first webcam to come along in a long while that truly innovates. That’s because instead of being fixed in place, its camera is mounted to a 3-axis gimbal that allows it to track you as you move around the room. But that’s not all; thanks to AI, the Link has a number of other features that will make you the champion of your next conference call or TikTok video including automatic subject tracking, a whiteboard mode, and even a vertical video mode.

During my Insta360 Link review, I was so impressed with its features, I kept showing them off to my colleagues; that’s something that rarely happens. The only question is if you need all the features in the Insta360 Link — and if you’re willing to pay the premium for it.

Insta360 Link review: Price and availability

The Insta360 Link debuted on Aug. 2. It’s available for sale for $299 at Insta360.com. Admittedly, that’s a lot more expensive than most webcams — our top pick, the Anker C200, costs just $60 — but the Insta360 Link does far more than any other webcam.

Included with the Insta360 Link is a GoPro mounting bracket as well as a C-clamp, so you can attach the camera to somewhere other than your monitor. 

Insta360 Link review: Design

It’s as if someone ripped the camera off one of DJI’s best drones and put it on top of your monitor. The Insta360 Link’s camera is mounted to a 3-axis gimbal that sits atop a small square base measuring 1.7 x 1.3 x 1 inches. Ringing the top of the base is an LED, which changes color from green to blue based on the camera’s status. If the camera is off, the light turns off, too.

The bottom of the base has a small lip and a hinged arm, so that the camera can sit securely atop your monitor. The bottom of the arm also has a tripod screw mount, in case you want to use it somewhere other than your computer.

Around the back of the camera is a USB C port to connect the Link to your computer.

After 10 seconds of inactivity, the camera will automatically shut itself off and physically rotate away from you, to give you extra assurance that it’s not recording.

Insta360 Link review: Software and Features

Just as with the company’s best 360 cameras, one of the best aspects of the Insta360 Link is its software, called Insta360 Link Controller, which enables a ton of features you won’t find anywhere else. It’s available for any computer running Windows 10 with a Core i5 processor or better, or any Mac running MacOS 10.13 or newer.

For starters, there are three gesture settings you can enable; if you hold your palm up to the camera, it will turn on auto tracking, so the camera will follow you around the room. It can’t track you a full 360 degrees — it can do about 270 — but it even kept following me when I disappeared around a pillar.

Make an “L” with your hand and move it up and down, and the camera will zoom in and zoom out. Make a V shape with your fingers, and the camera will enter whiteboard mode (more on this later). All of these settings worked seamlessly.

In addition to the standard webcam view, the Insta360 Link has four other camera modes.

• Desk view: Angles the camera down toward the desk in front of you. I found that you’ll need the camera to be at least two feet away from you if you want to show your entire desk; otherwise, the lower half of the frame will be of your lap.
• Overhead view: Angles the camera directly down. For this mode, you’ll need to mount the Insta360  vertically, and at a high enough distance from the surface you want to stream. One of the best iPhone tripods will help.
• Whiteboard mode: Included with the Insta360 Link are four stickers; apply these to the corners of a whiteboard, and when this mode is enabled, the camera will automatically center and straighten the image of the whiteboard in the center of the frame, so that callers can clearly see everything that’s written. Although it takes the webcam a few seconds to recognize the corners of the whiteboard, it’s like magic to watch it automatically center and straighten the image. What’s more, it doesn’t distort any person in front of the whiteboard, either. 
• Streamer Mode: Provided that the streaming platform you use supports 9:16 video, you can tell the Insta360 Link to rotate its camera 90 degrees to let you film vertical video.

Other features in the Controller app include the ability to manually control the gimbal, so you can move the camera into any position you like; image settings such as exposure, white balance, and contrast; tweaking auto-tracking and HDR mode.

Insta360 Link review: Video and audio quality

All the features in the world wouldn’t mean a thing if a webcam doesn’t produce a quality image. Fortunately, it has one of the best cameras we’ve seen yet.

The Insta360 Link has a 1/2-inch image sensor with an f/1.8 aperture and an ISO range of 100-3200. It can capture video at resolutions of up to 4K/60 fps, though HDR only works at resolutions of 1080p and 720p. 

The camera has a 79.5-degree field of view, which is fairly standard for most webcams. Other top models, such as the Anker PowerConf C200 and Logitech Brio, have wider FOVs (90 degrees), and can also be switched to either 78 or 65 degrees. You can’t narrow the Insta360 Link’s FOV, but you can zoom in on a subject, which has a similar effect.

In daytime conditions, the Insta360 Link excelled. Even bright sunlight glaring in from a window in the background didn’t cause any issues with exposure.

Even in a darkened room, the Insta360 Link was able to capture a bright and crisp image of me, using little more than the ambient light from my monitor. While I detected a little bit of graininess, the color of my green shirt was accurate, and the white letters on my shirt were sharply defined. I could even make out individual hairs in my beard.

By adjusting the exposure compensation, I was able to brighten more of the room around me. However, my features became a bit washed out when I did this.

Insta360 Link review: Verdict

It’s hard to believe that it’s taken this long for a company to invent a webcam like the Insta360 Link. It’s also somewhat surprising that we haven’t seen it from the likes of DJI, GoPro, Logitech, or some other company with more of a pedigree in webcams or, for that matter, gimbal-mounted cameras. However, Insta360 has had a number of innovations in its own right, and its first foray away from the world of body-mounted cameras is a real hit. 

There are other streaming cameras that can digitally pan and zoom to keep you in the frame — the Facebook Portal and Amazon Echo Show 10 come to mind — but none that can physically move, and are as compact as the Insta360 Link. And none have the features of the Link, either. 

For most, a simpler, less expensive webcam, like the Anker C200 or the Logitech C920s Pro HD — which both cost less than a third of the Insta360 Link — will more than suffice. But for those who need a superior webcam for business presentations and more, the Insta360 Link setsa new standard. 

The Anker PowerConf C200 is a budget-friendly webcam that doesn’t skimp on useful features. Whether you’re looking to upgrade your home office or just your laptop, the PowerConf C200 promises crystal-clear videos — even in low lighting — at a price that won’t break the bank. 

The PowerConf C200 was designed for personal workspaces, and it’s capable of shooting 2K  video at an impressive 30 frames per second. Anker offers an adjustable field of view (65, 78, or 95 degrees), impressive AI noise cancellation, and dual stereo mics to pick up every nuance of every syllable. 

Ounce-for-ounce and pixel-for-pixel, is this one of the best webcams you can get right now? Keep reading our full Anker Webcam PowerConf C200 review to find out.

Anker PowerConf C200 webcam review: Availability and price

As of this writing, the Anker PowerConf C200 Webcam is available for $60 on Amazon and $70 from Anker’s website. This is less than half the price of the older, better-equipped C300, which is marketed more toward the business crowd with wider viewing angles and enhanced audio capabilities. (Check out our full Anker PowerConf C300 review, with additional comparisons below.)  

• Save with our Anker discount codes
• Anker PowerConf C200 webcam at Amazon for $60

Anker PowerConf C200 webcam review: Design

At 2.4 x 2 x 1.6 inches and 2.9 ounces, the Anker PowerConf C200 is marginally (but noticeably) lighter than the 5.7-ounce Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam, which can be found for a similar price at a variety of online retailers. The squarish look is a completely different aesthetic than what you’ll find on Logitech’s rectangular webcams with contoured edges, but I found it easy to perch the C200 on my laptop or external monitor during testing. 

Unlike the Logitech C920s, which features a removable flip-up privacy shutter when nose-picking urges arise, the C200’s sliding shutter is built into the webcam itself, which is simply a better design. The C200 also has an integrated tripod threading on the bottom; you can also just set the C200 right on your desk, and adjust the proper viewing angle from there. No such threading is found on the C920s.

Akin the Logitech C920s, there’s no swiveling feature on the PowerConf C200, but such an absence is hardly a deal-breaker — especially at this price. The C200’s dual stereo microphones are rated for capturing audio up to three meters away, and are situated just below the autofocus lens. The privacy cover switch can be found up top, and I appreciated the James Bond-like effect when I slid this switch back and forth; it made my goodbyes way more dramatic whenever I peaced out of a Zoom meeting, that’s for sure.

Once I unboxed the boxy C200, all I had to do was plug it in (via USB port), download the Anker software for my Windows 10 laptop, sit through a quick firmware update, and I was ready to rock.

Anker PowerConf C200 webcam review: Video and audio quality

As I tested out the PowerConf C200, I appreciated the wider-than-average viewing angles; 78 degrees seemed to be the sweet spot for most video calls, and 90 degrees was plenty wide for the bartending classes I teach over Zoom. I do like having the 65-degree option, however, for more intimate one-on-one conversations, especially in low lighting. 

To see how the C200 stacked up against the competition, I set the viewing angle to 78 degrees in the AnkerWork app, bumped the 2K resolution to the max, and used it for several Google Meet and Zoom room chats, comparing it against both the mediocre webcam on my laptop (an HP ZBook Fury 17 G8) and the Logitech C920s. I also compared still photos from each webcam to evaluate image quality.

While video over the PowerConf C200 seemed a bit grainier than that taken with the 1080p Logitech C920s, the higher resolution seemed to expose more details, and colors popped just a bit more in daytime lighting. Image quality was undoubtedly superior to the Logitech C920s, which operated very well in low-light conditions during our testing, but not quite as well. (I’d also submit that the premium PowerConf C300 has a more responsive autofocus under dim lighting, but the C200’s performance is par for the course among even the best webcams, let alone those at this price point.)

When I called a friend over Zoom with the PowerConf C200, I was pleased by the image clarity and color quality on my end, even without that HDR mode found on the premium C300 model.

With my friend using a Logitech C930e Business Webcam from his MacBook Pro, his apartment looked a lot bluer than mine, and the details on my face (or anything else the lens autofocused on) seemed a bit sharper. Colors also seemed truer over the PowerConf C200 when compared to my laptop’s stock webcam, and I could even make out the stitching of my bright orange hat, and plenty of details from the bookshelf behind me.

Anker uses a larger aperture size to augment the PowerConf C200’s low-light capabilities, so I made some of my test calls after dark. Frontlit by my 27-inch desktop display and keyboard lighting, the camera’s low-light tech illuminated plenty of detail as I sat at my desk, and it filtered out more background noise than the Logitech C920s.

As advertised, the PowerConf C200 seems pretty capable of shooting in just about any lighting condition, even if you’re laptop-ing by candlelight. Regardless if you’re a Windows or Mac user, it’s compatible with Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Bluejeans, Cisco, Facetime for Mac, YouTube, Twitch, and more.

When I chatted with a friend over Zoom, he said my voice came through crystal-clear via the C200’s dual omnidirectional mics. And while the overall audio quality is comparable to my laptop’s built-in mics, my friend said Anker had the edge in terms of reduced background noise.

Though it’s rated for vocal pickup up to three meters away, the PowerConf 300’s super-sensitive mics could pick up my voice from across the apartment and into a whole separate room; during testing, my friend said he could hear me clear as day (even when speaking very, very low) from roughly 35 feet away.

Anker PowerConf C200 webcam review: Additional features

The plug-and-play PowerConf C200 is ready to use right out of the box, but you can tweak the video/audio settings from Anker’s dedicated desktop app. (This is the same software used by the C300, and you can toggle between multiple Anker webcams right from the app itself.)

• Resolution – Toggles between 360p, 720p, 1080p, and a whopping 2K.
• Angle and Frame – Choose between 65, 78, or 95 degrees for your field of view. 
• Anti-flicker – Helps reduce flicker when recording under artificial lighting (30Hz or 60Hz). 
• Image Settings – Lets you tweak the contrast ratio, brightness, sharpness, and saturation levels. 
• Horizontal flip – Flips the picture horizontally. 
• Pick-up Mode – Allows you to choose between directional (90 degrees) and omnidirectional (180 degrees) vocal pickup; noises outside this general range are muted.

As mentioned above, you won’t find an HDR mode, auto-framing, or the ability to toggle between 30 and 60 frames per second, but if I didn’t know these features existed with another Anker product, I wouldn’t miss them. 

Anker PowerConf C200 webcam review: Verdict

As the budget model among Anker’s lineup of business-friendly webcams, the PowerConf C200 is as unassuming as it is illuminating, and from everything we’ve seen so far, it’s a lot of value in a small package. 

At around $60-$70, the PowerConf C200 is also more affordable than other HD webcams you’ll find on the market today, such as the Logitech C930e, which offer a lower resolution (1080p) at a higher price ($130), but comparable low-light performance in a tidy package. More expensive webcams might offer more bells and whistles under the hood, but for no-nonsense hi-res video that won’t break the bank, there’s a lot to like about the PowerConf C200, and it’s sure to give any computer an instant upgrade. 

Microsoft is currently working on bringing casual games to the Microsoft Teams video calling service. Sources tell The Verge the company has begun testing games like Solitaire, Connect 4 and Wordament inside Teams. It seems that the Redmond-based tech giant wants to liven up Teams meetings by including games colleagues can play. But is this a good idea?

At the moment, the games being introduced into Teams are reportedly from Microsoft’s own Casual Games catalog. That means you shouldn’t expect to play company first-party offerings like Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5 with your team. Game integration is only being tested and it’s possible businesses and consumers may never see the feature. The Verge reached out to Microsoft for comment but it did not detail its plans.

The Verge says Microsoft is also working on virtual spaces inside Teams where colleagues can socialize and network with games. Teams’ “Together Mode” looks to get 3D avatars as a way to make meetings feel more immersive and enjoyable.

Since the onset of the global pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, Microsoft has introduced features to its Teams service meant to liven it up. This makes sense considering the number of people who have been forced to work from home. But even now as the world is transitioning to hybrid work, the company is continuing its efforts to make Microsoft Teams a more inviting virtual space.

While we can applaud what Microsoft is trying to do, we have to question the utility of having games on Teams. I don’t know about you, but I leave meetings the instant they’re over. I like my colleagues well enough, but I’m not trying to stick around longer than I have to. And it's possible meetings would either be unproductive or could last longer than necessary if people are busy gaming.

To be fair, games on Teams could work if the purpose of the call is meeting a new member or a virtual happy hour at work. Bottom line: implementing games with Microsoft Teams seems like a neat idea on paper, but I’m not sure how it will work out in the real world.

Google is finally streamlining its video calling apps — Google Meet and Google Duo. Both apps have been part of the Google Workspace and offer similar features — which really made us question the need for two different calling apps. Now, the single app will be called Google Meet, but will take on features from Duo as well. 

Google Meet launched in 2017 and is a consumer- and workplace-focused app for video calling. Users have to share and join a unique link to enter a call or meeting. It is a well rounded and much more developed web platform. 

Google Duo on the other hand, was launched in 2016 (at the same time as the unsuccessful Allo app). It made calling a bit easier as calls could be placed directly to people including with their phone numbers. In that sense, Duo is more like Apple's FaceTime.

It would be wrong to say Google has killed Duo enitrely, because a lot of Duo features will migrate to Google Meet. You will still be able to call family and friends using filters; existing messages and history will remain on the app as well. 

In fact, the merged app will be Google Duo itself which will be renamed to Google Meet and will get all of the latter's features. The current Meet app will be called “Meet Original,” and might eventually be deprecated. 

Sound confusing? It probably is, even though Google's aim is to simplify things with just one video call app, whether it's for work or personal use.

With this app merger, Google hopes that the Meet brand can be known for something more than “meetings.” You will still be able to schedule meetings and integrate with apps like Gmail and Calendar. You will also be able to live share content, text chat in-meeting and have access to real-time captions. Meet will also support 100 members; earlier this number was capped at 32. 

In Google’s blog, vice president and general manager of Google Workspace Javier Soltero said that, “In the coming weeks, we’re adding all the Google Meet features to the Duo app, so users can easily schedule a video meeting at a time that works for everyone, or continue using video calling to instantly connect with a person or group.”

The renaming of Duo to Meet will be done later in the year. 

Google also says that users will not have to download an additional app. But there are a few kinks that Google will have to iron out including how users will transition to the new app. It will take some balancing for Google to get this just right, but it is a move they could have done much earlier, maybe at the peak of the pandemic, when the use of Google Meet was soaring high.

Though many workers are now returning to the office, remote collaboration and video conferencing is still important — especially when working with colleagues or business partners from different parts of the world. Thankfully, Google is introducing a number of features that should improve the experience of using Google Workspace apps, especially Google Meet.

During its Google I/O 2022 press event today (May 11), the tech giant announced a number of new features coming to Google Workspace apps that are designed to facilitate hybrid work. Improvements in Google Meet video quality are the most notable upgrades, but there are a number of other improvements that anyone who regularly uses Google Workspace apps will appreciate.

Here are all the big features coming to Google Workspace in the near future:

Portrait restore

Portrait restore improves video quality by tapping into Google's AI tech to automatically sharpen and touch up your video feed. This feature should be useful for people who use Google Meets in a room with less than ideal lighting. It also automatically improves your video in case you have a bad Wi-Fi connection, according to Google.

It will be interesting to see how portrait restore works when your lighting conditions change – such as when clouds obscure the sun outside your window. The fact this feature improves video quality for those with spotty Wi-Fi connections is also intriguing.

Portrait light

Google Meets' new Portrait light feature leverages machine learning to simulate studio-quality lighting in your video feed. You’ll also be able to adjust the lighting position and brightness to look your best.

It's easy to see portrait light pairing well with portrait restore to improve Google Meets. The fact that you can manually adjust and position the light is a nice touch, since you can tune the lighting to your unique situation.

De-reverberation

De-reverberation filters out echoes on Google Meet calls. This should be especially useful for those who may be videoconferencing from an empty room or a space with hard surfaces. 

Google claims de-reverberation will make you sound like you're in a mic-ed up conference room, but of course we'll have to wait and see for ourselves.

Live sharing

This useful feature syncs content being shared in a Google Meet call and allows participants to control said shared content. No matter where you are or if you’re the person sharing the content or viewing it, everyone in the call can see and hear what’s happening at the same time.

Google says that its partners and developers can use the company’s live sharing APIs now to integrate Meet into their applications.

Auto-summaries extending to Spaces

This is more of a Google Workspace feature than a new Google Meet feature, but it's still pretty exciting if you spend any time in Google Spaces.

Google introduced automated built-in summaries for Google Docs earlier this year, and now the company plans to extend auto-summaries to Spaces. This will give you a digest of conversations you may have missed. Considering how long some Spaces chats can get, this feature should be extremely useful.

Automated transcriptions

Google is also bringing automated transcriptions of Google Meet conferences to Google Workspace. If you’ve ever jumped into an ongoing call late or missed it entirely, you’ll find this feature a virtual godsend.

Security protections

Last but certainly not least, Google Slides, Docs and Sheets will soon get many of the security protections that Gmail currently enjoys. Thanks to this feature, you’ll be alerted if, for example, you open a Google Doc that contains phishing links or malware.

These added security protections are appreciated, especially for those of us who do a lot of work in Google Workspace apps.

Want to know how to record video calls? Well, there are a few ways to go about it and they all take just a few clicks. Read on to find out how.

Recording video calls is a good skill to learn, and you’d probably be surprised at how often it comes in handy when you’re using the best video chat apps. Whether you want to record a presentation to watch back later, share what was on your screen with a co-worker or friend who wasn’t present, or just save specific parts of the meeting to your computer, recording the meeting you’re in is one of the best ways to do so.

Several video calling applications like Skype, Zoom and Google Meet have built-in ways to record and watch back meetings, and they're easy to use once you know how. In addition, there are catch-all methods for both Windows and macOS, which will work no matter what video calling software you use. These also save you having to relearn how to record your video call if you have to use a different video calling application than what you’re used to — like one of the best Zoom alternatives. 

You should never record someone who doesn’t want to be on film, so make sure you obtain permission from everyone present in the call before you hit record. Most video chat apps like Zoom, Google Meet and Skype warn participants they're about to be recorded, while maintaining a banner or alert throughout the recording to ensure everyone remains aware.

We've detailed methods for the most popular video calling apps, which all work on both Windows and macOS, so keep reading to find out how to record video calls. 

How to record video calls

Here's how to record a video call on the most popular video conferencing apps. We've also covered how to record using built-in tools on Windows and macOS. 

How to record video calls on Zoom

1. Set up the meeting you want to record. 

2. Click the "More" icon at the bottom of your screen and select "Record on this computer". Participants of the video call will be notified that they're being recorded.

3. To stop the recording, click "More" at the bottom of your screen and select "Stop recording".

How to record video calls on Google Meet

Note: you'll only be able to record a meeting in Google Meet if you're part of certain Google Workspaces.

1. Set up the meeting you'd like to record.

2. Click the three dots at the bottom of your screen, then select "Record meeting".

3. Now, click "Start recording" on the window to the right.

4. Finally, click "Start" to start recording. Participants of the call will be notified that they're being recorded.

4. To stop recording, Click "Stop recording" on the window to the right.

How to record video calls on Skype

1. Set up the meeting you'd like to record.

2. At the bottom of your screen, click "Record". Remember to notify the participants of the call that you're going to record the meeting.

3. When you're ready to stop, click "Stop recording" at the bottom of the screen. 

How to record video calls using Windows and macOS

If the meeting app you're using doesn't have the option to record video calls, use our tutorial on how to record a screen on Windows using the Xbox Game Bar tool. This lets you record your whole screen and works on most Windows applications. If you're a Mac user, we've got you covered there too with our guide on how to record a screen on Mac. In both cases, just make sure to inform the participants of the call that they're being recorded, as they won't be notified otherwise.

We've also got helpful how tutorials on how to stand out and look your best on video calls, how to make a video call using the Echo Show, how to FaceTime in the dark with Memoji and how to use WhatsApp group video calling. Want to know how to record a phone call? Try our tutorials on how to record calls on an iPhone and how to record a call on Android. And for more productivity guides, check out our article on how to change case in Google Docs. 

Is there anything more annoying than watching Microsoft Teams open on startup of your shiny new laptop? It may be a widely used application for businesses and those who work remotely, but at least give us a choice to open it!

Even if you have one of the best computers, having lots of programs opening on startup may cause your machine to boot more slowly than it could. On older PCs, especially those without SSDs to boot from, this can be crippling to the computer, causing extremely long waits for the computer to be usable after booting.

Whatever the case, we’re here to show you how to stop Microsoft teams from opening on startup. This guide will be using Windows 11, so while the steps won’t be exactly the same on WIndows 10, they will be pretty much the same.

Here's how to stop Microsoft Teams from opening on startup.

How to stop Microsoft Teams from opening on startup 

There are several ways to stop Teams from opening on startup but we’ve chosen the simplest, most direct technique. Note that you can use this method to stop any app from starting at launch.

1. Click on the magnifying glass icon next to the Start icon on the taskbar.

2. Type "settings" in the search bar then click on Settings.

3. Type "apps" in the search bar on the upper left. Select Startup Apps.

4. Scroll down until you find Microsoft Teams and toggle it off.

How to remove Microsoft Teams from the taskbar 

The Microsoft Teams icon remains on your taskbar even if you stop the app from launching on startup. Follow the steps below to remove Teams from the taskbar.

1. Right-click anywhere on the taskbar and click on Taskbar settings.

2. In the taskbar items window, toggle off Chat.

How to uninstall Microsoft Teams 

If you want to completely remove Microsoft Teams from your PC, follow these steps.

1. Click on the Start icon in the taskbar then click All apps.

2. Type Teams in the search bar, then right-click on Microsoft Teams and select Uninstall.

3. Click Uninstall in the following window.

For more computing tips and tutorials, why not read our guides on how to see your Wi-Fi password in Windows 11, how to find out which Windows version I have and how to check your hard drive's health. We also have productivity guides, including how to change case in Google Docs and how to enable clipboard history on Windows.

When the pandemic began, video calling software suddenly became much more important, and people flocked to the likes of Zoom, Skype and (briefly) Houseparty in their droves. Google Meet was an alternative, and indeed went free for all in April 2020 to help people stay connected in lockdown, but it was a barebones offering, with a deliberately simplified feature set that some users found limiting.

Seeing that remote work is very much here to stay, Google has announced a series of upgrades to Meet that will make it a more appealing proposition for the long haul. Presented as a way to allow “hybrid models to become the sustainable norm,” Google unveiled a whole host of upgrades that should make Meet more fully featured, especially to those signed up to Enterprise accounts.

First up is in-meeting emoji reactions, which are coming next month. In short, it’s a way of reacting to what’s being said in real-time without having to unmute and potentially disrupt the flow of a meeting — something that’s all too easily done in the slightly disconnected medium of video calls. Google has gone to great pains to ensure that they feel like a human connection while at the same time not feeling too distracting — you can read more about the research that went into the feature in a separate blog post.  

Next up, “in the coming weeks” is integration with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. After Starting a meeting, users will be able to quickly bring up a document, spreadsheet or presentation alongside the grid of faces in the meeting, allowing better and more personal collaboration on files.
 

Alternatively, if you need to multitask beyond Google’s stable of productivity apps, next month you’ll be able to do that too with picture-in-picture mode. This is only for Chrome, but will allow you to pop out up to four video tiles into a floating window, letting you get on with other stuff on your main browser window.

Later in the year, Google Meet will expand its livestreaming reach, allowing users to stream directly to YouTube. The existing livestreaming feature set will be enhanced too, with attendees able to take part in Q&A sessions and polls as if they were part of the regular Meet session.

Next up, there’s a security update for more sensitive chats: in May, Google will roll out optional client-side encryption, and this will be followed up later in the year with an end-to-end alternative. “Together, these enhancements strengthen the foundation of security that help make secure, hybrid collaboration happen at scale,” the company explains.

Finally, users of the best webcams and hardware that have been certified to work with Google Meet  will benefit from noise cancellation to block out the distracting sounds of keyboard clicking and unwanted noise from the neighbors. This has started rolling out now, apparently, so you may already have benefited.

It’s a welcome set up of improvements, and should help to bridge the gap between office-based and remote workers that bit more cleanly. “With a unified approach to communications and collaboration, you can build a sustainable hybrid work model that gives employees the ability to deliver their best from anywhere,” Google concludes.

New features are coming to Google Workplace aimed at boosting efficiency and flexibility, and Google Meet stands to benefit. Google plans to roll out a number of changes to Meet in the next few months that appear to be designed to handle hybrid meetings involving both remote attendees and people who are in the same room.

Google detailed its Google Meet improvements along with a number of other coming Workspace features in a post to the Workspace blog this week. For the video conferencing software, the biggest changes appear to the addition of in-meeting reactions plus picture-in-picture capabilities. You’ll also be able to start a meeting directly in Docs, Sheets and Slides.

Here’s a closer look at these new changes coming to Google Meet.

Google Meet in-meeting reactions

Presenting to far-flung attendees can sometimes feel like shouting into the void. Google Meet’s in-meeting reaction feature appears to be aimed at connecting speakers with meeting attendees by recreating some of that in-person feel.

Specifically. In-meeting reactions include animated emojis — hearts, thumb up, laughing faces and the like. When used, these animated reactions will appear in a user's video tile or alongside their name when their video tile isn't visible.

The idea, Google says, is that these reactions will give "immediate feedback to speakers and other attendees." A short clip included in the blog post shows an attendee use a "heart" emoji, which causes three hearts to float up from the bottom of her video tile.

Expect in-meeting reactions to appear in Google Meet during April.

Google Meet picture-in-picture

When you hold your video meetings via a Chrome browser, you’ll be able to take advantage of another capability Google is adding to Meet. Picture-in-pictures figures to bolster multitasking capabilities.

Using this option will trigger a floating window that includes up to four video tiles. The window then stays on top of other applications, and clicking the window will quickly take users back to the full meeting. Google pitches picture-in-picture as a feature that allows you to more easily share content.

Like in-meeting reactions, this new feature arrives in April.

Google Meet launching meetings from Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

It’s also going to be simpler to get started with Google Meet, as you soon be able to start a meeting from Docs, Sheets, and Slides. 

With this update — which is arriving in the coming weeks, according to Google — users will be able to bring their meetings into documents, spreadsheets, and presentations for all attendees to view while being able to continue any ongoing conversations. That should mean extended collaboration opportunities, according to Google.

Other Google Meet additions

Google touched on a variety of other upgrades coming to Meet later this year, too, including the ability to stream meetings directly to YouTube. That’s coming later this year as is the ability to let livestream participants join in Q&As and polls, as if they were in a smaller Google Meet session. (Google Meet supports audiences of up to 500 attendees, while also letting live streams reach up to 100,000 people.)

Additional changes include automatic noise cancellation on all Google Meet hardware and client-side encryption for Google Meet.

Hybrid meetings don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, so these new upgrades to Google's popular meeting app are shaping up to be helpful additions. 

Zoom’s latest update is pretty wild, literally. Users can now attend classes or meetings as an animal using a new avatar feature that makes your facial expressions look infinitely more adorable. 

Available as a free beta feature in Zoom version 5.10, these avatars give a Memoji-like spin to video chats. There are currently 11 different animal avatars, like a panda, raccoon and bunny to name a few. In a blog post announcing the Avatars feature, Zoom said new avatar options would be coming “in the future.”

Though the animals may seem a bit childish, they could be useful for virtual learning or, better yet, storytelling. Using an avatar can also help with Zoom fatigue, perhaps encouraging users to turn their camera on and reveal facial expressions as they speak even if they might not look as presentable as they’d like for a call. Because sometimes you just don’t have the time (or energy) to put on makeup or shave your scruff. And while Zoom Escaper is genius in theory, it’s not usually cool to ditch a meeting altogether.

Avatars are the most recent tool for users to shake up an average video chat. If you know how to use Zoom, you might know how to change your Zoom background. Maybe you’ve even downloaded one of the best free Zoom backgrounds. You can actually combine a virtual background with an animal avatar to place your character somewhere more fitting, like a bamboo forest or dog park. 

Follow Tom’s Guide on TikTok to see Zoom avatars in action, and follow the steps below to learn how to use them yourself. 

How to use Zoom animal avatars

1. Update to Zoom 5.10 if you haven’t already. You may be prompted to update the client or app when you open it, or you can manually get the update at Zoom's Download Center.

2. Launch or join a Zoom meeting. See how to set up a Zoom meeting and how to join a Zoom meeting if needed.

3. Click the up arrow next to Start/Stop Video. You’ll need to have your camera turned on to use animal avatars.

3. Click ‘Choose Video Filter’ from the pop-up menu.

4. Click the ‘Avatars’ tab in the Background & Effects settings window. 

5. Choose your animal avatar. It may take a few seconds to load. It will help if you have good lighting. 

And now you know how to use Zoom avatars to turn yourself into an adorable animal for your next meeting. For more fun Zoom features, see our guide on how to do karaoke on Zoom and how to get Snapchat filters on Zoom.

Knowing how to use Zoom is an essential skill these days. Zoom is one of the best video chat apps for remote meetings. And for those who are still social distancing, Zoom is great for virtual get-togethers, too.

Throughout the pandemic, video conferencing apps like Zoom have been extremely useful. They help businesses continue in their operations and have virtual meetings with team members and clients. For schools, Zoom allows teachers to deliver their classes to students over the web. And learning how to use Zoom has become essential for bringing far-flung friends and family members together for social activities like happy hours and even weddings. 

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Zoom has been in use by the corporate world for years but has recently become a dominant force in the industry, forcing rivals like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Skype to quickly add new features to keep up.

Zoom is available on many devices, and Zoom for Home will soon expand to smart displays including Amazon Echo Show, Portal from Facebook and Google Nest Hub Max.

Here's how to use Zoom on your iPhone, Android device, or Windows or Mac laptop to stay connected while at home. 

Getting started with Zoom

Before you get started with Zoom, you need to make sure you have a webcam.

Zoom works across devices, including mobile and computers. You don't have to worry about this if you're on a smartphone or tablet, since they already come with front-facing cameras baked in. The same goes for laptops.

However, if you have a desktop (or want better video quality on your laptop), you'll need to buy yourself a webcam. Popular options include the Logitech C310 and Microsoft Lifecam HD-3000.

How to sign up for Zoom and choose a plan

Once you have your webcam ready to go, it's time to sign up for Zoom by visiting the Zoom website.

If you're an individual or you have little need for frequent video conferences, the free Zoom Basic package gives you the ability to chat with up to 100 participants and hold unlimited one-on-one meetings. Be aware, however, that you're limited to 40 minutes in group meetings. If that's annoying, check out our Zoom vs Google Hangouts face-off, to see how Zoom compares to a video call service without time limits.

Zoom also offers several plans for businesses that need more functionality. Those plans start at $15 per month for Zoom Pro, which includes the ability to have a 24-hour presentation and user management, among other features, and bumps to the $20-per-month Zoom Business plan for the ability to hold meetings with 300 participants at once. 

A version for large enterprises is also available, but customers need to contact Zoom sales to sign up. Looking for a diand should check out our Zoom vs Google Hangouts face-off).

Getting Zoom software

After you enter your e-mail account and password upon signing up for Zoom, you'll be taken through the process of actually getting the client software. Again, the software you use will be dependent upon the device you're trying to download Zoom on.

Either way, when you're brought to your account page, you can click on the Resources tab at the top of your page to find the Zoom client you need. Pick your software (Windows or Mac) and download the Zoom client.

Make sure your keep the client software updated. Not all updates are automatic, even if they fix security or privacy flaws. You may have to download some updates directly from the Zoom website.

If you're on mobile, you can go with the Zoom app available in Apple's App Store for iOS or Google Play for Android devices.

Skipping Zoom software

You don't actually need to install anything to use Zoom on a desktop or laptop. All you need is a web browser.

When you get the invitation to join a Zoom meeting, click on the meeting URL. A new tab will open in your preferred browser, and if you have the desktop client app installed, the meeting will bounce over to the app.

However, if you don't have the desktop client software, then the Zoom browser window will ask you to download it. Ignore that suggestion and skip down to the fine print underneath: "If you cannot download or run the application, join from your browser."

Click the highlighted text in "join from your browser" and you'll be presented with a Zoom meeting page. Sign in with your name and join the meeting.

How to host a meeting on Zoom

Once your Zoom app is downloaded to your device of choice, you'll need to know how to set up a Zoom meeting.

Sign in to your account. At that time, you'll have the option to schedule a meeting. Simply click the "Schedule a New Meeting" button and decide when the meeting should be held, who will be attending, and more.

Once that's set, Zoom will give you login information for participants and the ability for users to log in via the app or on their phones.

Interestingly, Zoom also comes with a quick sign-in feature for mobile users. So, if someone participating in your call doesn't have Zoom, they can quickly call the Zoom number and Zoom will automatically get them in by inputting their meeting ID and other information without any delay.

How to join a meeting on Zoom

If you get an invite from a Zoom user and you don't happen to be one, you can easily join via phone in the manner outlined above. You can also download a thin client for Zoom in your browser that allows you to join meetings via video.

Since you already have the Zoom app downloaded to your device, you can also use that app to input the Meeting ID supplied by the host to quickly join. Zoom also creates unique URLs for each of its meetings to easily get to where you need to go.

Here's a more extensive guide on how to join a Zoom meeting and how to see everyone on Zoom in the grid format.

Trying to find the chat menu in Zoom? Check out our how to chat in Zoom guide.

Extra Zoom features you should try

One of the great things about Zoom is just how many different features it comes with aside from letting you communicate with your team.

For one, you and others on the call can easily share your screen during use, so you can illustrate a point, discuss how to use certain features, and more. Screen recording is also baked in, so you can record what you're showing and send it off to other people over time. 

Zoom also includes the ability to have chats with people while you're on a call and even share files, so you can quickly collaborate on documents you're working on.

If it's collaboration you're after, Zoom features the ability to break people out into their own rooms, so they can work on something and come back to the main room at some point in the future. Users in groups can also all annotate on screens and whiteboard on the fly.

If you're wondering how secure Zoom is, the app features 256-bit AES encryption, as well as SSL encryption.

Deleting Zoom

Whether you downloaded Zoom for a one-time meeting or found you prefer a different video chat app, you can ditch Zoom at any time.

Here's how to delete Zoom on all your devices. 

UPDATED to add statement from Zoom.

If you're using Zoom on a Mac, make sure your Zoom desktop client software is updated to version 5.9.3, issued Jan. 25. That's because older versions may keep the Mac's microphone turned on and listening even after a Zoom meeting has ended.

"Why is the Zoom app listening on my microphone when not in a meeting?," asked user aaronklein in a Zoom support forum in mid-December. 

"Several times in the last few weeks, I've noticed the orange dot indicating the microphone is being used by an app, and I click on the Control Center and see that Zoom is accessing the microphone," wrote aaronklein, who said their Mac was running macOS 12 Monterey. "I'm not in a meeting and simply have the Zoom app open. Why would Zoom be accessing the microphone when I'm not in a meeting?"

Other users on the thread reported the same thing, and said diagnostic apps had confirmed that the microphone really did stay on, not just the indicator light. They had to close the Zoom client app entirely to turn the microphone off.

First patch didn't quite take

Zoom pushed out a patch Dec. 27 to update the Mac desktop client to version 5.9.1 and fix "an issue regarding the microphone light indicator being triggered when not in a meeting on macOS Monterey." But that didn't seem to work.

"Staring at the orange dot now while not on a Zoom meeting. Very frustrating," wrote user apireno on the same thread, who said that the update made no difference. "Zoom, please stop spying on me."

We don't really think Zoom is trying to spy on Mac users, despite some of the more heated discussions in the support thread and a related discussion on Y Combinator's Hacker News forum.

How to fix this issue on your Mac

In any case, a Zoom moderator wrote in the support thread that version 5.9.3 fixed the issue for real. The complaints dropped off after that, although no one volunteered to confirm the good news. 

We at Tom's Guide tried it out on a test Mac and can confirm that the orange light does go out now after a Zoom meeting ends.

The only issue is that the update to version 5.9.3 may not be automatic. Zoom's release notes indicate that this is a "manual" update that users will have to download from the Zoom site and install manually. 

That's as opposed to a "prompted" update which will either update automatically when the Zoom client is started, or prompt you to start the update. 

If you're interested in more Zoom security and privacy issues, we've got you covered.

Update: Zoom statement

After this story was first posted, Zoom sent us this statement, in full:

"The Zoom client for macOS 5.9.3, released on January 25, 2022, fixed a bug involving the failure to properly terminate the microphone use post-meeting. Zoom has determined that this bug did not result in audio data being transmitted back to Zoom's platform. As always, we recommend users make sure their Zoom client is updated to the latest version."

The NexiGo N930AF Webcam is a budget-priced webcam that punches above its weight. The webcam, which costs around $50, provides 1080p/30fps for sharp, clear video and also has auto-focus to help you avoid blurry images. There’s even a privacy shutter to provide security when you don’t want the camera’s roving eye to see what you’re doing. However, its audio is less than impressive. Is that a deal-breaker among the best webcams? Keep reading the rest of our NexiGo N930AF webcam review to find out.

NexiGo N930AF Webcam review: Availability and Price

The NexiGo N930AF Webcam is currently $54.99 on Amazon. The NexiGo website also sells it for $54.99.

NexiGo N930AF Webcam review: Compatibility

The NexiGo N930AF Webcam works with Windows XP/7/8/10 or later, macOS X 10.7 or later, Chrome OS, or Linux 2.6.24 or later. It uses a USB 2.0/USB 3.0 port. The webcam works with popular chat and streaming software like Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, Webex, Messenger, Hangout, OBS, and Xsplit.

NexiGo N930AF Webcam review: Design

The NexiGo N930AF Webcam attaches via a long (5.4-foot) USB 2.0/3.0 cable. The lightweight camera measures 3.9 x 2.2 x 2 inches, and it weighs 6.3 ounces. 

The webcam has two privacy covers, which are packaged separately and include instructions for how to attach them. The covers are bendable and rather flexible - flimsier than the privacy covers found on mid- and higher-end webcams, such as the Logitech C920s Pro HD. However, they serve their purpose. Only one cover can be used at a time (one is a back-up), and it is attached to the camera using the double-sided tape on the back of the cover. After it’s attached, the cover can be opened or closed.

It’s relatively easy to mount the webcam on a laptop or external monitor using the flexible clip/base. There’s also a tripod attachment in the base.

The webcam itself has a HD lens, and includes a noise reduction microphone.

NexiGo N930AF Webcam review: Video and Audio Quality

First all, I love that the NexiGo N930AF Webcam is a plug-and-play device. I’m accustomed to having to download software and/or software updates that can be quite time-consuming. I did end up downloading the optional NexiGo Webcam Settings App, but it was a quick and easy process.

The NexiGo has a max resolution of 1080p/30fps, but using the NexiGo software, you can downscale it to 720p/30fps, and 480p/30fps. At its highest resolution, the image is sharp enough to show all of the split ends on the top of my head, so I would say it does a good job of picking up details. 

There’s definitely a difference between 1080p video and 720p video, which is much grainer, and tends to lack definition. The NexiGo is comparable to the Logitech C920 which also provides sharp and clear images, and true-to-life colors. The webcams are also similar in another aspect: they both provide webcam settings to adjust brightness, saturation, color, etc.

The NexiGo’s field of view is 65 degrees, and is not adjustable — which is not unsurprising for a webcam at this price.

The auto focus feature is another function that helps the webcam to provide high quality video. I tested this webcam at night, with only a few lights on, and was impressed with the soft, warm color of the video. After downloading the NexiGo Webcam Settings App, I had access to additional settings to make adjustments to the brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, and more. However, the original settings were more than adequate for dimmer settings.

The webcam has a built-in microphone with noise-cancelling technology. However, during my tests, the individuals on the other end were not impressed with the audio. It’s not distorted, but doesn’t sound like a phone call. (Full disclosure: these individuals have also been on the other end for tests of the Logitech StreamCam, and Logitech Brio, in addition to the Poly Studio P15 and Poly Studio P5, so they have pretty high standards.)

The only other webcam I’ve tested in this price range are the Logitech C920s (about $15 more expensive) and the Logitech C310 (currently $20 cheaper). The Logitech C920s also provides 1080p/30fps, has a sturdier privacy shutter, includes auto focus and automatic light correction, has two omni-directional microphones, and a 89-degree field of view.

The NexiGo N930AF is definitely an improvement over the Logitech C310, which provides 720p/30fps and does not have a privacy shutter. That webcam has a 60-degree field of view, fixed focus, and a mono microphone.

NexiGo N930AF Webcam review: Verdict

The NexiGo N930AF is a fantastic value for those who want a webcam with 1080p video, auto focus, and a privacy shutter. Although it lacks certain features like digital zoom and pan and tilt, it provides the basics for professionals at a great price. The audio leaves something to be desired, but one of our best microphones can solve that problem. 

Like it or not, knowing how to look good on video calls has become pretty important. What started out as a stopgap has now become the norm, and since the world went virtual, video calls have become the de facto way of communicating with co-workers, friends and family alike. 

Even if you have one of the best webcams or best laptops, or own one of the top smartphones, that isn't a guarantee you're going to look fabulous on a video call.

With that in mind, looking your best for that Zoom interview or virtual first date (if you’re lucky) has never been more crucial. So, whether you’re using Google Meet, Skype, Teams, or any other virtual conferencing application, here’s how to look your best on video calls. 

How to pick the best lighting for video calls

What is a webcam? Simple: it’s just a camera. And one of the most important aspects of photography and videography is lighting. To really shine on that conference call —no pun intended — the ideal place to start is illumination.

The cheapest and often best light is the stuff that comes from the sun, so pull up the blinds and open the curtains. If you’re still looking shady, you can use an artificial light source like a desk lamp. Many household light bulbs, like the ones you’ll usually find in lamps, cast a yellowish hue. To achieve a cleaner, natural feel, use a bulb with a color temperature — measured in Kelvins (K) — close to daylight, around 5500K. For a more professional touch, you could look at picking up one of the best desk lamps or best ring lights.

You can also use your computer’s monitor to brighten things up. Pulling up a mostly white page, such as a website or Word/Pages doc, and positioning this alongside your video chat window can provide plenty of light, especially on bigger screens. Ensure your screen brightness isn’t set too high, though, as this can blow out highlights, obscuring your face.

How to position your lighting 

Positioning your light source properly can make a massive difference. For the best results, light should hit you from a frontal 45 degree angle, casting natural-looking shadows on your face for a flattering aesthetic. It’s not always practical to achieve a perfect 45 degree angle, especially if using a window for lighting, so perpendicular is okay too —the most important thing to remember is to avoid backlighting. Sitting with a window behind you, for example, will leave your face in complete shadow. 

Frontal lighting, where the light source is directly in front of your face – as you’d get from using your monitor or by facing a window – is also better than backlighting, but can have drawbacks. Fully frontal lighting creates no shadows on your face, risking a flattened look, but you can use it to your advantage: position another light source, like a lamp, at 45 degrees. Now, one light is acting as your primary light and casting shadows on your face, while the second is acting as a ‘fill light’, lifting the shadows from your main light and further brightening your face.

How to use automatic lighting settings

If adjusting your lighting manually all seems like too much effort, or you still haven’t managed to light yourself as much as you’d like, you can always count on technology to do the job for you.

Apps like Google Meet and Zoom have automatic brightness features built in which, while not a full substitute for proper lighting, still do a pretty decent job.

How to use automatic lighting settings on Google Meet

While on a call, select ‘More options’ near the bottom of your call window, go to ‘Settings’, then ‘Video’, and toggle ‘Adjust video lighting’. You have to be on a call to do this, but you can start a meeting by yourself to adjust the settings and they’ll stay as you leave them for next time.

How to use automatic lighting settings on Zoom

Open up ‘Settings’ and head to ‘Video’. Turn on ‘Adjust for low light’. You can leave this set to ‘Auto’ in the drop down menu, or select ‘Manual’ and adjust your brightness using a slider bar. 

Zoom also offers a ‘Touch up my appearance’ option for desktop and mobile app users. By toggling this option in video settings and adjusting the slider, it will soften your face for a smoother look. Most video calling apps also offer blurred backgrounds, for a more photographic aesthetic.   

How to use automatic lighting settings on Skype

For Skype on Windows, you can adjust your camera’s brightness through the settings menu. Unfortunately, this is currently not an option for macOS users.

To do this, open the settings menu by pressing CTRL+Comma in the Skye app, then select ‘Audio & Video’. Next, click on the ‘Webcam settings’ button, and move the ‘Brightness’ bar to adjust your camera’s brightness.

How to use automatic lighting settings on Teams

For Teams, you can use Windows' native Camera app to adjust your camera’s brightness, as well as enabling other useful features. 

Open the start menu and find the Camera application, or search for it using the taskbar search field. Once open, click the gear icon to the open the settings menu, then enable 'Pro mode.' A ‘+/-’ icon will now sit on the left of the camera window. Click this, and a slider will allow you to adjust your camera’s brightness. This will also apply to your video calls on Teams.

You can also use the settings menu to view a rule of thirds grid, which will help you position yourself in the frame. Click the drop down box under ‘Framing grid’ and select ‘Rule of thirds’ to do this.

It's also possible to adjust the resolution of your camera on the settings menu for the best quality image, by scrolling down to ‘Video quality’ and selecting the highest definition from the dropdown. 

 How to position your camera

Positioning your camera plays an important part in how you look on video calls. 

In most cases, low angles aren’t flattering — nobody needs more chins than they actually have. Instead, try to raise your camera until it’s approximately level with your face. If you’re using a laptop, consider investing in a laptop stand to raise your machine up (these are also beneficial to posture and workplace comfort, reducing the risk of neck and eye strain). You could also raise your machine by placing it on a box or stack of books for the same effect. Just make sure your platform is stable. Alternatively, if you can’t raise or lower your webcam or laptop, adjust your chair up or down instead. 

If you’re using a desktop with an external webcam, ensure your camera is positioned at the top of your monitor.

How to frame yourself

Just as important as camera placement is where you place yourself in the frame. Webcams often use relatively wide angle lenses so they can fit lots into view, even in small spaces. Unfortunately, wide angles cause image distortion, making whatever is close to the lens seem unnatural-looking and disproportionately large. Likewise, sitting farther away makes you look tiny.

Make a test call to figure out where to position yourself to look the most natural. Aim to be positioned in the middle of the image, with your eyes one third of the way down. Roughly divide the frame into 3 columns (or use the rule of thirds grid from above) and aim for your head to span most of the central column while remaining fully in frame.  

For work calls and video conferencing, remember to maintain a professional air by looking toward the camera. If your laptop and/or webcam are positioned to the side of a second monitor, turn to face the camera.

How to spruce up your video background

Looking good on a video chat is about more than just your appearance — your surroundings need to impress too. That said, you needn’t convert your home office into a full-on library to make an impression. Instead, here are a few simple tips for improving your video call background.  

•  Tidy up: As simple as it sounds, cleaning up can have a big impact on how you come across. That clothes rack? Move it into another room. The vacuum cleaner? Wheel it away. 

• A fresh coat of paint: Given you spend so much time in your home office, why not freshen it up? Replace that garish wallpaper with a sleek, neutral-colored paint job. 

•  Declutter walls: Placing one or two items on walls behind you, like a framed photo or artwork, gives visual interest without causing too much distraction. 

•  Add some vegetation: A splash of green goes a long way. If there’s a shelf or window sill behind you, add in a fern, succulent or hanging plant. It doesn’t even have to be real. 

•  Stop intruders: Escaping family life while working from home isn't easy, but you can limit the number of background wanderers by letting your family know beforehand that you’re about to go on a video call. 

Now you know how to look your best on video calls, you might be interested to know that you can use your camera as a webcam. And if you're thinking of upgrading your home office setup, take a look at our picks of best office chairs and best monitors.

Learning how to change your Zoom background is an essential skill these days, with so many people still using the video calling service. Changing your Zoom background gives regular video conference meetings some visual flair. And it's great if you're holding a themed virtual event, like a birthday or happy hour.

The ability to change Zoom backgrounds is one of the service's best features (and copied by other video chat apps). If you're working from home, you might be trying to hide the fact that your home office or bedroom is a bit cluttered. It's easy when you change your Zoom background so that you appear like you're on flying on the Millennium Falcon or sitting on the Iron Throne.

Over the last few years, millions of people have been using Zoom to attend work meetings, participate in online classes and keep up with friends and family. But even if you know how to use Zoom, you may not be sure how to change your Zoom background. Many people have discovered and enjoyed using the setting that allows you to add a virtual background, which swaps out the real-life background with a video or image. No green screen is required. 

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Zoom offers a few default virtual backgrounds, or you can upload your own image to change your Zoom background to something more personal. We rounded up some of the best free Zoom backgrounds you use. 

Here's what you need to know about customizing your background. 

How to change your Zoom background on the desktop app

Before joining a meeting:

1. Download the Zoom app for Mac or Windows
2. Open the app and sign in. 
3. Click your profile picture, then click on Settings.
4. In the left menu bar, click on the Virtual Background tab (if you don't see this tab, log in to the Zoom website, go to Settings and toggle on Virtual Background).
5. In the Virtual Background tab, select one of Zoom's defaults or upload your own image.
6. If you have a green screen set-up, you can select that option.
7. To add your own image or video, click the + icon to upload from your computer.

After joining a meeting:

1. At the bottom of the client, click the up arrow next to Stop Video.
2. Select Change Virtual Background.
3. In the Virtual Background tab, select one of Zoom's defaults or upload your own image.
4. If you have a green screen set-up, you can select that option.
5. To add your own image or video, click the + icon to upload from your computer.

How to change your Zoom background on the mobile app

1. Download the Zoom app for iOS to your iPhone or iPad
2. Open the app, sign in and join a meeting.
3. Tap the three dots at the bottom right to open the More menu.
4. Tap Virtual Background.
5. Select one of Zoom's defaults or upload your own. 

How to change your Zoom background: Where to find free backgrounds

Check out our list of the best free Zoom backgrounds you can download. They come from brands including Nintendo, Disney, Netflix and Marvel as well as sites like Unsplash (a library of free stock photography), Canva (an online design tool) and Modsy (an e-interior design service). 

Now when you join a meeting, you can appear to be visiting Wakanda or talking from a Love Is Blind pod or lounging on The Simpsons couch.

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The Logitech C310 Webcam is one of the company’s least expensive models. In fact, there’s only one Logitech webcam (C270 HD) that costs less, and you can bag them both at even better prices if the right Logitech promo code is available. But inexpensive isn’t synonymous with cheap. For less than $50, the Logitech C310 provides 720/30fps for a relatively sharp image, in addition to auto light correction. It also includes a noise reducing microphone, and is easy to mount on laptops and monitors.

Keep reading our Logitech C310 HD review to discover why it’s the best webcam under $50.

Logitech C310 HD Webcam review: Availability and price

The Logitech C310 HD Webcam goe for less than $40 On the Logitech website. We've also see it goes for as low as $26 on Amazon. 

Logitech C310 HD Webcam review: Compatibility

The Logitech C310 HD Webcam is compatible with Windows 7 or later, macOS 10.10 or later, or Chrome OS. You’ll also need a USB-A port. The webcam works with popular platforms and applications like Skype and Google Meet.

Logitech C310 HD Webcam review: Design

The Logitech C310 HD Webcam comes with a 5-foot USB-A cable, and user documentation. It’s a small, lightweight camera that measures 2.8 x 1.2 x 1 inches, and with the clip and cable, it weighs 2.5 ounces. 

The webcam has a plastic lens, which is typical of Logitech’s budget-priced models. It doesn’t have a tripod – but only one Logitech webcam (the Logitech C922 Pro HD) does.

Above is a photo of how it looks on top of my 27-inch monitor.

Logitech C310 HD Webcam review: Video and audio quality

The Logitech C310 HD Webcam provides 720p/30fps video, which is the resolution used in the image below. It’s a decent image at this price point, but compared to a glass lens and 1080p/30fps video of the Logitech C920s Pro HD, the image is obviously grainy and lacks sharp details. But if the webcam is for your kids or just casual web chats, that’s probably not a deal breaker.

The camera stream from the C310 can’t be rotated (unlike the much more expensive Logitech StreamCam), so you can’t use it in portrait mode. The webcam has a 60-degree diagonal FoV, and it’s not adjustable. However, only Logitech’s $200 webcams include this feature.

The webcam does not have digital zoom, pan and tilt, or autofocus, either. You would need to upgrade to the mid-priced Logitech webcams (C920e, C922, C925) to get those features.

However, the C310 HD does have auto light correction. It uses Logitech’s RightLight 2, and the  face-tracking technology sets the lighting based on the subject (you), and then lightens or darkens the video accordingly. In low lighting and uneven lighting environments, it can adjust the frame rate and improve the baseline image quality without creating video noise.

The webcam has a built-in mono microphone, compared to the dual omnidirectional mics on the higher-priced Logitech webcams. The latter provide a clearer and more natural sound. The audio on the Logitech C310 HD is probably better than your laptop’s, and it’s decent, but honestly, most webcam mics are unimpressive, and most people find that purchasing one of the best USB microphones can greatly enhance the audio for video chats.

Among budget Logitech webcams, the Logitech C310 HD is almost identical to the Logitech C270 HD Webcam, which is a few dollars cheaper. In fact, there are only a few miniscule differences between the two. The C270 has a 55-degree diagonal field of view, whereas the C310 HD has a 60-degree dFoV. The C270 has a 0.9 MP camera, compared to the C310 HD’s 1.2 MP camera.  

Otherwise, both cameras have a max resolution of 720p/30fps, plastic lens, built-in mic, fixed focus, and universal mounting clip.

Logitech C310 HD Webcam review: Verdict

If you want to spend well under $50 for a basic webcam to use for school, video chatting with family and friends, or virtual meetings with your colleagues, the Logitech C310 HD provides a decent image with respectable audio.

However, if you prefer a webcam that provides full HD 1080p, auto focus, and even has a privacy shutter, the Logitech C920S Pro HD is the middle ground between budget-friendly and more expensive webcams. 

Video conferencing has become a vital part of our lives over the past couple of years, but it hasn't gotten that much better. While attending work meetings or talking to friends and family via apps like Skype, Discord and Zoom technically keep us connected, talking to another person over a webcam isn’t exactly intuitive. Thankfully, Dell is working on a solution that will make video calls feel more natural with Concept Pari.

I was impressed with Concept Pari since it solves the biggest problem with video conferencing — not being able to look another person in the eye. And though working from home is still a relatively new phenomenon, this solution of placing a webcam where you desire feels like something that should’ve been invented long ago.

We saw Concept Pari ourselves during a press event Dell held in New York City last week where the company outlined Concept Flow, an adaptable concept solution that could eliminate many of these frustrations and productivity disruptors.

What is Concept Pari?

Concept Pari is a moveable wireless web camera that attaches magnetically to a display. It can be placed anywhere on compatible displays, in a charging dock, on a stand, or held in the hand. This allows users to make direct eye contact with the people they are speaking with. Plus, you can easily share offscreen content.

The unit we saw was very small and light (less than 1 ounce), and it can handle 1080p video over Wi-Fi. Other hand features on Project Pari include a power indicator, and a vertical indicator light to help with alignment. There's also a USB-C dock for wireless charging, and you can put in the camera backwards to protect your privacy.

Dell says Pari could be a companion accessory that “forms part of a 'hybrid work' toolkit as people transition between different locations for work.”

I asked Dell’s presenters if Concept Pari would be compatible with non-Dell monitors. Not surprisingly, the webcam will only work with monitors made by the company. That’s somewhat disappointing but it’s a small price to pay in order to improve one’s work productivity and digital social life.

In addition to Concept Pari, Dell also unveiled Concept Stanza. Which is another device meant to facilitate hybrid work.

Dell Concept Stanza

Note-taking is another aspect of work that Dell has taken into consideration. When thinking about new ways of working, the company knew there was an opportunity to reconsider this most basic necessity of working life.

Having extra screens can greatly improve productivity and collaboration. Concept Stanza takes Dell’s exploration of multi-screen solutions further with a thin and light portless 11-inch companion device similar to a tablet that is designed to make note-taking “easier and smarter.”

The idea with Concept Stanza is to make note taking feel seamless. For example, you can double tap to convert your scribbles to text, and you can easily search for content and extend your screen to a larger monitor while working. The best part is that all of your notes are shareable across multiple devices, so you don't have to take a picture of what you wrote and then email to yourself or others. 

Concept Pari and Concept Stanza demonstrate a new way of viewing hybrid work. Both devices are still in their testing phase and it is unclear when (or if) they’ll go into production. But even as concepts, it’s exciting knowing Dell has been working on such clever hybrid work solutions. Speaking as someone who now engages in hybrid work, I’m eager to see these concepts come to life and how they can make us all more productive.

Zoom may be one of the best video chat apps out there, but the free version is about to get a lot less appealing. Advertising is coming, so you better get ready for Zoom to try and sell you stuff when you hang up your calls.

Thankfully, this change is only going to affect free users. So anyone that actually pays money for Zoom is going to be spared this particular change. But either way Zoom is going to make sure it gets paid.

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In a blog post announcing this change, Zoom pointed out it used to be a tool used primarily by business users. However the COVID-19 pandemic saw a huge influx of individuals using the service, and the company is going to start cashing in.

According to Zoom, the pilot advertising program will “enable [it] to support investment and continue providing free Basic users with access to our robust platform”. To us that sounds like Zoom is saying adverts will be necessary to ensure the free tier sticks around in the future. 

After all, free users are essentially costing Zoom money every time they make a call, And honestly, given how popular Zoom got during last year’s lockdowns, it’s surprising they took this long to start adding ads.

But it’s yet another downside to using Zoom as a free user. After all, any free tier meetings that have three or more people are limited to 40 minutes. Premium users don’t have that problem.

The good news is that the ads seem to be pretty limited for the time being. Premium users, i.e. those that pay for Zoom, won’t be affected at all. Meanwhile ads will only start being visible to free users in certain countries, and only on the browser window after they end a call. So your calls won’t be interrupted by pop-ups or distracting banner ads.

Zoom has also tried to make it very clear that your meetings, chats and shared files won’t be used for anything related to marketing or third-party advertising. So your private conversations will stay private. However there will be cookies involved, and there will be a banner on the Zoom website that takes you to the service’s cookie management tool.

Of course if any ads, even those as unobtrusive as the ones Zoom is piloting, are a deal breaker for you, then you may just have to cough up the cash for a premium account. They range from $15 to $20 a month. 

Or, alternatively, you could try another of the best video chat apps or one of the best Zoom alternatives. There are plenty to choose from, with a lot of the same features as Zoom, and some of them are free and ad-free

• More: How to set up a Zoom meeting

SharePlay has arrived, coming to the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, via software updates released earlier this week. The new sharing capability in FaceTime is coming to the Mac, too, though not until later in the year as part of a subsequent update to macOS 12 Monterey.

Since Apple announced SharePlay during the summer, the feature has gotten a lot of attention. It's easy to understand why — SharePlay is a big extension of FaceTime's feature set. With SharePlay, you can now watch movies and TV shows with other people on a video chat or listen to music with them or share your screen (and since Disney Plus added SharePlay you can use it with that app too).

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Other video chat services already offer capabilities that are similar to what Apple's doing with SharePlay. But Apple is betting that the feature's integration across all of its devices will be embraced by people who use FaceTime as their video messaging app of choice and perhaps encourage more people to give FaceTime a try.

I've been spending some time with SharePlay, first as part of my iOS 15 review and later as research for a guide on how to use SharePlay. It's a welcome addition to FaceTime, and it may be the kind of enhancement that makes me — a person who can take or leave Apple's video chat app — turn to FaceTime more often to reconnect with family and friends.

Most discussions around SharePlay have focused on the ability to watch movies and shows together, which is understandable — it's a very cool capability. But SharePlay offers other features as well, and some its capabilities may surprise you.

Here's a closer look at some of SharePlay's less publicized elements.

Screen-sharing may be SharePlay's secret weapon

The ability to share your screen with other people in a FaceTime call feels like it's flying under the radar, but I suspect a lot of people are going to put it to good use now that SharePlay is rolling out. For starters, sharing your screen is a great way to do remote tech support, something we're tasked with at some point when trying to help family members make sense of their gadgets. I find that it's also a good way to share photos in real-time with an intimacy you don't get from texting.

To that end, you're able to pinch and zoom on a shared screen in SharePlay, which can really help you drill down into the details of a photo. Images also appear at the native resolution on the sharing device, so you're seeing everything nice and crisp.

A screen-sharing feature that's especially of value is one most people won't see. Should you get an on-screen notification while sharing your screen, it won't be visible to anyone else. SharePlay suppresses pop-up dialogs and notifications in order to protect your privacy.

SharePlay is very responsive

One of the highlights of SharePlay is that it syncs up video and music so that everyone on a FaceTime call is experiencing the same thing at the same time. You also share controls so that anyone can pause or resume playback or even skip ahead to the part everyone else wants to see.

The best part of this experience — for me on my test calls, anyway — is that these controls are responsive. When I tap pause, playback stops nearly immediately for everyone on the FaceTime call. Credit SharePlay's low latency for this level of seamlessness.

SharePlay integrates with Apple TV

The Apple TV set-top box is probably not the first Apple device you think of when it comes to FaceTime calls, but I do think it's about to become part of your FaceTime experience when you're using SharePlay. 

Say you've started a FaceTime call on your iPhone, and everyone wants to watch a video together. If you're near an Apple TV, you can switch playback over to that device, enabling you to watch your movie or show on a big screen while continuing the FaceTime call on your phone. (You'll need to be running the latest version of tvOS for this feature to work.)

SharePlay and picture-in-picture

Apple added picture-in-picture to the iPhone last year, and that feature figures to get a workout in FaceTime now that ShareTime's here. When you tap the picture-in-picture button, you reduce your SharePlay session to a floating window, allowing you to access other apps on your iPhone or iPad.

There's something special about the SharePlay picture-in-picture, though — in addition to the video, there's also a square featuring the participants in your FaceTime call. (The face of the last person to talk is the one that appears.) Tap that square to jump back to FaceTime.

Apple's come up with other clever ways to let you interact with people during SharePlay sessions, particularly if you're watching something lengthy, like a movie or live sporting event. There's a Messages button in the FaceTime menu that you can tap to text message with your FaceTime call participants. This can come in handy when you're watching something where you want to focus on the action at hand. (Of course, if someone does want to talk, SharePlay drops the playback audio so that you can hear what they have to say.)

SharePlay teams up well with Apple Music

It's no surprise, really, that Apple would make sure that its streaming music service puts its best foot forward for SharePlay. That's the advantage of operating both the streaming service and developing the sharing tool.

You get the synced-up playback, of course, but lyrics are also synced up appear on the screen. There's a shared queue of upcoming songs that's accessible to everyone on the FaceTime call. And just as anyone can control playback, anyone can add songs to queue as well.

Third-party SharePlay support

During the beta for iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, you were restricted to using Apple TV Plus to try out SharePlay. (In addition to Apple Music, SharePlay also works with Apple Fitness Plus, along with any content you buy or rent from Apple's online store, provided everyone on your FaceTime call has bought or rent that particular title, too.) Look for SharePlay's reach to expand now that the feature is live in FaceTime, as third-party app makers roll out updates that incorporate SharePlay support.

Paramount Plus and Showtime have already added SharePlay support to its streaming apps. The NBA is announcing support today (Oct. 27) that will let you SharePlay games through the NBA app. An update to Disney Plus is expected later this year.

The focus at the moment may be on streaming apps, but Apple offers a SharePlay developer tool for incorporating support into any kind of app, and we're already seeing support finding its way into unexpected places. Redfin, for example, has added SharePlay support to sync up browsing for home listings on its app. Night Sky supports star-gazing over SharePlay and the Heads Up! party game has been updated with SharePlay features, too.

TikTok just announced an update incorporating SharePlay, in which you can sync up video watching with other people on a FaceTime call. Anyone on the call is able to swipe up to watch a new video, and you can also favorite and follow TikTok contributors from within the app.

Expect additional announcements about SharePlay support from a wide array of apps, as developers find a way to integrate the sharing tool into their software.

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The Logitech C920s is the middle ground between the company’s $100+ webcams with all the bells and whistles, and the more budget friendly models (less than $60). In other words, it’s the least expensive of Logitech’s higher-end webcams. And you get a lot of bang for your buck, including a glass lens, full 1080p video, dual omnidirectional mics, autofocus, and several other features. The Logitech C920s also includes a privacy shutter (one of only 3 Logitech webcams with this feature - and the only one that won’t cost you $200).

Keep reading our Logitech C920s review to find out why you should definitely scoop up this webcam – if you can find it - and be sure to check our Logitech promo codes to see if you can pick it up for less.

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Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam review: Availability and Price

On the Logitech website, the C920s is available for $69.99. Another option is to get the Logitech C920 HD Pro webcam on Amazon for $68 at time of writing since this camera is basically the twin of the C920s. There is only one difference: the C920 does not have a removable privacy shutter. However, you’ll need to move quickly to get the C920 as well, since the company plans to discontinue it.

Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam review: Compatibility

To use the Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam, you need Windows 7 or later, macOS 10.10 or later, or Chrome OS. A USB-A port is also required. The webcam works with popular platforms and applications, such as Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Twitch, OSB, and XSplit.

Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam review: Design

The Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam is packaged with a 5-foot USB-A cable, privacy shutter, and user documentation.

The webcam is bigger and sturdier than Logitech’s less expensive models; however, it’s still a relatively small and lightweight camera. It measures 3.7 x 2.8 x 1.7 inches, and weighs 5.71 ounces. The camera has a glass lens. 

It doesn’t include a tripod, but does have a tripod-ready universal mounting clip, which I used to mount on an external monitor. The privacy shutter is detachable, and that’s a handy feature to have on a webcam, especially at this price point.

Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam review: Video and Audio Quality

The Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam provides 1080p/30fps video, which is the resolution used in the image below. It can also be switched to 720p/20fps. Its glass lens contributes to the clear video quality, and both the foreground and background images are realistic. 

I finagled my desk lamps in various positions to test the auto-lighting, and for the most part, the camera’s RightLight 2 technology was able to compensate accordingly. Also, the autofocus provided real-time tracking to prevent me from blurring the image as I was moving around.  

The 78-degree field of view is not adjustable, which is typical of most Logitech webcams under $200. However, the colors were rich and vibrant.

The Logitech C920s is a plug and play webcam. However, the Logitech Capture software (known as LogiCapture) provides more functionality, such as the ability to turn off autofocus and auto white balance, as well as zoom in. In the photo below, you can see that I was also able to add text and a text box. And if you find that Logi logo on the right side irksome, you can turn it off.

The webcam has two omni-directional mics, certainly an advantage over a single omni-directional mic. This helped to ensure that my voice wasn’t competing with the background noise in the room, so my voice was clear when I called someone to do a test. However, be advised that it’s very good, but not great audio. If you prefer the latter, check out our selection of the best microphones to use with webcams.   

As a point of comparison, the Logitech C290s is similar in performance to the Logitech C922 Pro HD Stream Webcam, which is $40 more, includes a tripod (but not a privacy lens) – and is also a streaming webcam. Otherwise, both cameras provide the same resolution/frame rate, noise-cancelling mics, autofocus, and auto light correction.

Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam review: Verdict

If you want more than a basic no-frills webcam, but you don’t want to break the bank, the Logitech C920s Pro HD Webcam is the sweet spot between the two. It has a laundry list of features, and will get you firmly in the high-quality webcam range. You’ll certainly look and sound polished and professional.

However, if money is no object, the Logitech Brio includes additional features as high dynamic range, infrared sensor technology, and an adjustable field of view.  The Brio also uses RightLight3 (a step above RightLight 2) for even better auto light correction. But for a midrange webcam with some good features — including a privacy shutter — check out the Logitech C920S Pro HD.

Want to know how to receive FaceTime calls on Android? FaceTime has got a few new features thanks to iOS 15, one of them being the ability to add Android users to FaceTime calls.

In fact, almost anyone can now join a FaceTime call, as long as they have access to a device with a web browser. This is a real step forward for Apple, which has previously kept access to its video calling app exclusive to users with Apple devices.

• Learn how to use portrait mode in FaceTime on iOS 15
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Although understandable, keeping use of the app exclusive to people who have Apple devices isn’t ideal when so many people now use video call software as their main method of communication. Fortunately, Apple has finally made FaceTime available to use even if you don’t own an iPhone or other Apple device, putting FaceTime on par with other video calling apps such as Zoom or Google Meet.

Unfortunately, you still can’t set up a FaceTime call if you’re not on an Apple device just yet, but you can still join a call as a participant. Keep reading to find out how to receive FaceTime calls on Android.

How to receive FaceTime calls on Android 

To join a FaceTime call on Android, you will need to have a meeting link shared with you on a messaging app such as WhatsApp or via text. 

1. Find the meeting link that the host has shared with you.

2. Click the link to open FaceTime in your browser. 

3. Enter your name and tap “Continue.” 

4. Tap "Join."

5. Wait for the host to connect you to the call. Once the host has added you, you’ll be able to chat face-to-face with the other participants. 

How to invite Android users to FaceTime calls 

1. Make sure your Apple OS is up to date. If you’re using an iPhone or iPad, you’ll need iOS 15. 

2. Open the FaceTime app and click “Create Link.” 

3. A menu will pop up allowing you to share the link through various apps. Tap one of the app icons to share the link with one of your contacts in that app. Alternatively, you can tap “copy link” and paste it into a message yourself. 

4. To join your call, tap the name of the call in the list, then tap "join."

5. When someone (including those using an Android device) taps the link, they will be sent to a waiting room. Let the other participants join the call by tapping the check mark next to their name. 

Need more help with iOS 15? We have tutorials that will help you. Check out how to set up a notification summary in iOS 15 and how to use live text on iOS 15. If you’re an Android user, have a look at how to check Android battery health and how to record a call on Android.

The Whiteboard feature in Microsoft Teams has been given a massive overhaul. This significant upgrade is ideal for teams working from different locations as it aims to makes remote collaboration even easier. 

If you’ve not used it before, Microsoft Whiteboard is an online collaboration tool that allows you to brainstorm ideas with your team in a shared visual space. The tool can be used standalone, or in conjunction with Microsoft Team’s flagship video conferencing functionality. 

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As the full launch of Windows 11 approaches, Microsoft is giving several of its apps and programs a refresh and this Microsoft Whiteboard upgrade is the latest. The feature has been given a whole new user interface, which makes the tool almost instantly accessible to newcomers not to mention making it look very slick in the process. (But be careful — Teams has some unpatched security flaws.)

Users on a desktop or laptop will notice that the app’s marking tools and content creation menus have been separated in an effort to streamline and improve overall usability. On mobile, by default, the creation panel and board controls are hidden to optimize display space but can easily be accessed at the touch of a button. Larger, more colorful, icons have also been added to make general navigation easier. 

The update has also added 40 additional, fully customizable templates which are designed to be used in common group project scenarios. A new sticky notes features has been added. These come in twelve shades, and can even be assigned to a specific user so you can tell who came up with an idea at just a glance — they could also be used to color-code work. 

Further improvements include the ability to add images/shapes to a Microsoft Whiteboard project. As well as additional improvements to the digital marking system, such as new highlighter color options and more degrees of marker thickness. There’s also a new ink to shape recognition function, so you can draw a slightly wonky line and Whiteboard will convert it into a perfectly straight one. 

This is a pretty substantial suite of upgrades, and all these improvements will surely be warmly received by teams that regularly use Microsoft Whiteboard. We expect to see Microsoft refresh more apps in its stable ahead of Windows 11’s launch on October 5.

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Google Meet now offers a live translated captions feature. This enables the video-chat platform to translate foreign languages in real-time, which could make international calls and business meetings much easier. 

The beta feature was announced this week via a Google Workspace Update and is currently only available to select Google Meet users. Although, like most new beta features it’s expected that once it’s been thoroughly tested it will be rolled out to all. However, Google hasn’t announced when the feature will leave beta just yet.  

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Live translated captions turn spoken Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German into fully translated English subtitles in real-time during a Google Meet. Currently, the feature is only able to translate into English from the four languages listed above, although Google may expand these capabilities further down the line.

This is a pretty significant upgrade from Google Meet’s pre-existing live captions feature. The platform has been able to turn spoken word into captions for quite a while now, but translating foreign languages is a very welcome expansion of the functionality. 

Google explained that the live translated captions allow “Google Meet video calls to be more global, inclusive and effective by removing language ability as a barrier to collaboration. 

"By helping users consume the content in a preferred language, you can help equalize information sharing, learning, and collaboration, and make sure your meetings are as effective as possible.” 

The tech giant also pointed out that live translated captions could be extremely useful in an educational setting. The feature has the potential to allow teachers to communicate with a wider variety of students who may not speak the same language, as well as increase inclusivity among parents from diverse backgrounds. 

In its beta form, the feature is only available for meetings organized by Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus and Teaching & Learning Upgrade users. If you meet the criteria, you apply for access to the feature right now.  

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Webcams provide a much better video conference experience than the camera on your laptop or phone — and the Poly Studio P5 webcam excels in this area. It has both the video and audio components needed to look and sound professional during meetings. The small yet durable webcam has 1080p resolution and 4k digital zoom. It also uses low-light technology and produces realistic colors. In addition, the single directional microphone does a good job of capturing your voice without picking up background noise. Keep reading our Poly Studio P5 review to find out if this webcam is right for your needs.

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Poly Studio P5 review: Availability and Price

The Poly Studio P5 normally sells for $79 on Amazon, though we've seen it retail for as low as $39.

Poly Studio P5 review: Compatibility

The Poly Studio P5 works with Microsoft Windows (8.1, 10), and Mac OS X (10.7 or later). It’s certified compatible with Microsoft Teams and Zoom video conferencing applications. However, the kit is plug and play compatible with any app that uses UVC/UAC standards. It has a USB 2.0 port.

Poly Studio P5 review: Design

The Poly Studio P5 includes the webcam, removable monitor clamp, and USB cable.  Instructions and documentation are also included.

The Poly Studio P5 is compact, and easily fits in the palm of my hand. Unlike most other webcams, which are either squarish or rectangular, the circular P5 is bullet-shaped, tapering towards the back. Also separating it from other webcams is its speckled-gray finish.

It has an adjustable monitor clamp and mounts easily and securely on top of my MacBook. The webcam is tripod-ready, and also has a privacy shutter for when it’s not in use.

Poly Studio P5 review: Video and Audio Performance

The Poly Studio P5 is designed to be used in professional environments (although you can certainly use it for school or in other applications). As a business webcam, it provides Full HD and HD options. The image below is Full HD (1080p).

The field of view is 80 degrees, and it is not adjustable. However, the image can be digitally zoomed up to 4x. I played around with the two lamps on my desk to see how the video image would look in a low light environment; the webcam auto-adjusted to compensate. It also has auto focus, and when I moved around in my chair, it ensured that I was properly framed.

The webcam provides vivid, realistic colors. Compared to other webcams that I’ve tested, I would rank the Poly Studio P5 slightly below the pricier Logitech Brio. However, the Poly Studio P5 is solidly on a par with the Logitech C922 Pro HD Stream webcam, which also records at 1080p and has autofocus and auto light correction.

The Poly Studio P5 has a built-in single directional microphone with a 50 HZ to 16 kHz frequency response. The audio is surprisingly clear. It does pick up loud background sounds (and I don’t know of any microphone that doesn’t) but does a good job of muting typical ambient noise.

For an even better audio experience, you can also pair the Poly Studio P5 with one of the company’s headsets. I tested the Voyager 4220 UC 2-ear headset, which you can buy in a kit with the webcam for $286. It’s quite lightweight, and has convenient controls on the earcup.

Poly Studio P5 review: App

I’m a strong believer in taking advantage of the software that comes with a given product. The Poly Lens App makes it easy to adjust settings and customize the webcam and headset preferences. For example, in the photo below, you’ll see the options to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, and more. 

Poly Studio P5 review: Verdict

It’s hard to beat the convenience and practicality of the Poly Studio P5. Poly has long been known for its professional-level equipment, and this webcam is no exception. You get quality 1080p video and the ability to hear conversations clearly even when there’s background noise.   

Still, the Logitech C922 Pro HD Stream Webcam normally cost considerably less and offers comparable video quality. It also has auto focus and auto light correction and even includes a handy tripod if you don’t want to mount it on the laptop; however, it doesn’t have a privacy shutter. But if Logitech’s camera isn’t available, the Poly Studio P5 is a solid option.

Google Meet has added a new feature that may resolve the pernicious and annoying problem of echoing microphones in our current video conferencing work-life. 

In a recent blog post, the company stated that Google Meet has been enhanced with an alert system to let you know when you could be responsible for the echo feedback. At the moment, it can be hard to tell who the source of the annoying feedback is, and Google is hoping it can put an end to frustrating video calls.

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"Most of the time, Meet will intelligently control the audio to remove the echo. However, sometimes it still happens, and causes others to hear an echo from your device when they speak," said Google in a Workspace Updates blog post. "Until now, it has been difficult for you to know when your device is causing an echo. Now, we will notify you when we detect a notable echo from your system which may be heard by other call participants with a red dot on the more options button, along with a text notification."

While Google Meet already offers an automatic echo correction feature, it may not be sufficient for some web meetings.  The new alert allows Google to pinpoint which microphone is causing the problem. The new feature can help users from having to step away from the meeting to go and resolve annoying mic issues.

Among the suggested fixes are reducing the volume, muting their microphone and using a headset. The meeting can carry on while the issue is being fixed, since only the person who causes the issue will get the notification and deal with it on their end.

This feature will automatically be enabled for all Google Workspace, G Suite Basic and G Suite Business customers without requiring additional functionality by the administrator. This new feature began rolling out gradually Monday, August 23, and will be completed in the next 15 days. 

How Echo alerts work in Google Meet

A red dot will appear in the bottom right hand corner of the screen if Google detects an echo during the call. The user will receive a message. The notification will link to a webpage on the Help Center with more details on how to reduce echo. Google may suggest users reduce the volume.  

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It's very useful to know how to change your Google Meet background. Video calls are more important than ever, but there are times when you won’t want people to be able to see the space around you. This could be for privacy reasons, or because your home office happens to be a mess that day.

Fortunately, you can avoid showing off your surroundings without needing to switch off your webcam. Most video chat apps, including Google Meet, let you change your background, so it shows you and nothing else. 

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As well as applying a fake background, or using an image from your computer or mobile device, it's also possible to blur your real background, so that nobody can see the details.

We've explained elsewhere how to change your Zoom background, but here’s how to change the background in Google Meet.

How to change your Google Meet background before a video call

Changing your background can be done at any time, even before you physically join a meeting or other video call. That way you jump in ready to go, and don’t need to mess around with the settings while people can see what’s on your webcam. Here’s how to do it.

1. Head to Google Meet, and select the meeting you’re set to attend

2. The next page shows you a preview of your webcam feed. Click the icon in the bottom right with the human silhouette. On mobile, it’s an icon featuring three stars

3. A menu will open at the bottom of the preview, featuring different background options to choose from. We'll explain how to apply them in a moment.

How to change your Google Meet background during a video call

If you need to change your background after the meeting has already started, you don’t need to leave the video calls to get it done. But the process is a little different.

1. If you're using Google Meet on the desktop, click the three-dot menu button at the bottom of your screen, and select "Change background" from the pop-up menu.

2. Mobile users should see a three-starred icon at the bottom of their camera feed, but the camera has to be on for this icon to be visible.

3. Both options open a selection of background options to choose from, just like in the previous section.

How to change your Google Meet background: Applying a background

Once the background menu is up, it doesn’t matter how you got there, the process of picking a new background is exactly the same. Here's how to apply a different background.

1. Decide whether you want to blur your background, choose a stock option, or pick a custom background.

2. There are two blurring options at the start of the menu: "blur" or "slightly blur." These perform the same job, but as the name suggests they feature different levels or blurring.

3. The next option, which is a big ‘+’ sign, lets you choose a custom background. Tapping or clicking it lets you select an image from your device, which you can pretend is behind you, instead of what’s actually there.

4. After that, there a number of stock options, featuring a number of different locations and scenes. The first three are animated too, as denoted by the Play button on the right-hand side of the thumbnail.

And there you have it. No matter what device you’re using, or when you’re having your video meeting, it really is that simple to change your background in Google Meet.

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Zoom is launching a new feature to keep students from getting distracted, as it continues to adapt to the changes brought by Covid.

Video conferencing software has become an increasingly common teaching tool during the pandemic, and with Covid cases on the rise again in many places, the new “Focus mode” feature looks like a welcome addition. It will work by letting the person broadcasting see everyone on the call, whereas the other attendees will only be able to see the broadcaster, and will theoretically spend less time distracting each other. 

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Focus mode is similar to Zoom’s existing Webinar feature, but whereas that’s only available with a paid premium account, this will be free to all users. What’s more, Focus mode can be turned on or off during the session, which isn’t possible in a Webinar.

As a participant, you’ll still be able to see your own video, emoji reactions sent by other users, and hear other people speak if they have their microphone unmuted. You’ll also be able to see the names of other participants, just not their video feed. 

Plus, the broadcaster can also spotlight certain participants, which will make their video viewable to everyone alongside the broadcaster.

There’s also a lot of flexibility built in. The feature can be turned on for individual users or groups, and you can also lock it on, to ensure participants use it during the session.

Although designed with teachers in mind, Focus mode could clearly have other uses, too — for example, giving a presentation to employees where you want to make sure they’re focusing on the slides, and not their colleagues. It could also be a big help to anyone who feels self-conscious about being on camera, given that only the person in charge of the meeting will be able to see them, rather than a whole group of people.

With another semester of online schooling on the cards for many, Zoom’s efforts to make life easier for teachers and students alike is to be welcomed. However, until it can block users from opening Roblox in another window, it may still have a ways to go to stop young users from getting distracted.

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Deepfake attacks will become more sophisticated and harder to detect, Matthew Canham, a University of Central Florida research professor and cybersecurity consultant, told the Black Hat security conference last week. 

Canham added that we may soon see phishing attacks using deepfakes on Zoom or other videoconferencing apps, which he dubbed "zishing," as well as deepfake attacks using biometric media like fingerprints or facial recognition.

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"My friend Dolores got a series of text messages from her boss to buy gift cards for 17 employees for the upcoming holiday party — and not to tell anyone," Canham said, "Dolores bought the gift cards, the party came, and the boss didn't know anything about it."

Dolores, Canham explained, had been the target of a text-message-based deepfake attack, in which an automated script or "bot" initially contacted her and impersonated her boss by "spoofing" her boss's cell number. 

The bot exchanged several messages with Dolores to establish trust, and then a human took over on the other end and walked her through the rest of the scam.

Other deepfake scams

A well-publicized attack in the U.K. a few years ago involved phone calls, Canham said. A computer-generated voice application — or maybe a skilled human impersonator — that mimicked the boss's voice called a company posing as the chief executive, and then ordered that wire transfers be made to a specific account. 

This happened two or three times before the company got suspicious and asked the "boss" to verify his identity.

Canham calls these "synthetic media" attacks, in which the deception involved a combination of real and fake information. He's come up with a classification framework that gauges five factors: medium (text, voice, video or a combination), control (run by a human, a bot or both), familiarity (how well does the target "know" the fake person), interactivity (are communications slow, fast or instant?), target (a particular individual, or anyone?). 

Canham cited a wave of virtual-kidnapping scams that took place in Indiana. People would receive calls from a family member, only to speak to a scammer who said he had abducted their family member and demanded ransom. One man even got a such a call about his daughter, even as his own son got a ransom call from someone pretending to be the father.

The only "proof" was that the calls seemed to be coming from a loved one. However, it's not difficult to "spoof" a phone number.

What the future holds for deepfake video scams

More video-based scams are coming, Canham said. We've already seen the deepfake video that comedian and director Jordan Peele did in which former President Barack Obama seems to comment on the movie Black Panther and insults then-President Donald Trump. 

In that case, Peele impersonated Obama's voice himself, then used a deepfake program to alter existing video of Obama so that the mouth movements matched the words.

More alarming, though it may not be obvious, Canham said, was the "I'm not a cat" Zoom video from 2020 in which a Texas lawyer found himself stuck with a kitten avatar during a court hearing. 

In this case, the kitten avatar perfectly matched the Texas lawyer's mouth and eye movements in real-time. It may not be long before similar overlays and avatars can make videoconferencing participants convincingly look like completely different people.

"Give it a few years, and I think we'll soon see Zoom-based phishing attacks," Canham said, "Take that lawyer kitten video — imagine it wasn't a cat, but the image of a different lawyer."

After that, he said, the next frontier is biometric-based phishing attacks, although that might involve "Mission Impossible"-style physical creations.

"You could argue that a 3D-printed fingerprint might qualify," Canham said.

However, there could be a digital component to that too. A few years ago, German researchers showed that a high-resolution photo of Chancellor Angela Merkel's eyes might be good enough to fool an iris scanner, and that a similarly precise photo of another German politician's raised hand could be used to create convincing fake fingerprint.

To stop a deepfake attack before it goes too far, Canham said, some surprisingly low-tech solutions might be effective. He said he'd heard of one company boss who told his staffers he would never ask them to buy gift cards. 

In other instances, pre-shared code words might be required for an authorized person to transfer large amounts of money, or the approval of more than one person might be necessary.

He also suggested fighting a bot with a bot, as it were. There's already the Jolly Roger Telephone project, Cahnam said, a computer program that's designed to draw telemarketers into pointless conversations and waste their time. Maybe the best defense against deepfakes is another deepfake.

You can view Canham's Black Hat presentation slides here, as well as a related white paper.

Web conferencing has become a permanent fixture in our daily routines; the Anker PowerConf C300 webcam is looking to bring more “oomph” to your workday. As the name suggests, the  PowerConf C300 webcam is aimed at the business crowd, and it hits its ultra-wide mark with this little gadget.

The PowerConf C300’s beautiful 1080p resolution — combined with 115 degrees of viewable space — is bound to outpace the stock webcam on your laptop, and its Auto Frame mode is particularly useful if you move around a lot during conference calls. Plus, thanks to dual stereo mics and impressive low-light capabilities, your Zoom companions won’t miss a syllable — or a shadow. In short, it’s a slick little webcam that’ll give your home office tech an absolute upgrade. 

Read the rest of our Anker PowerConf C300 review to see how it compares to the best webcams, including the Logitech C930e.

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Anker PowerConf C300 webcam review: Price, availability, and compatibility

The Anker PowerConf C300 webcam costs $99 and you can find it on Amazon, in addition to select online retailers. 

The C300 is aimed at the business sector, and it’s compatible with both Mac and Windows machines. The webcam’s viewing angles (which can be adjusted from 78 to 115 degrees) are great for a variety of accompanying software, such as Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Bluejeans, Cisco, Facetime for Mac, YouTube, Twitch, and more. 

Anker PowerConf C300 webcam review: Design

At 3.8 x 1.3 x 1.3 inches and 4.2 ounces, the Anker PowerConf C300 is bulkier (but slightly lighter) than the 5.7-ounce Logitech C930e, which is already on the larger end for standalone webcams.

I didn’t mind the overall design of the C930e, but when placed side-by-side with the PowerConf C300, the latter is much more attractive; the camera itself looks more like a miniature GoPro than a traditional webcam. 

The mounting clip fits snugly on any laptop or display bezel, and similar to Logitech’s offering, Anker includes an integrated tripod threading on the bottom. The webcam is on a swivel, too, which is a welcome (and useful) touch. The 5-foot USB cord should be plenty long for most.

Like most contemporary webcams, the PowerConf C300’s autofocus lens is sandwiched between dual microphones, which are optimized to capture audio from as far as three meters away; the lens itself can be covered by the slidable privacy cover. (A perk for all webcam users, but particularly so for anyone working from home.) 

Anker PowerConf C300 webcam review: Video quality

As I tested the Logitech C930e webcam, I was impressed by its wider-than-average viewing angles; 90 degrees is plenty of space to fit most business presentations (and more than one caller) on screen. Anker goes the extra mile, though, and then some: with the included software, you can toggle between 78, 90, and 115 degrees. (With Logitech, you’re stuck with just one 90-degree view.) You’ll notice the extra screen real estate for sure.    

In addition to that wider presentation space, the PowerConf C300 easily outperformed the C930e in terms of image clarity; colors absolutely popped. With HDR and anti-flicker enabled, the greens and reds from my favorite business suit stood out nicely over Zoom, along with my bright orange briefcase in the background. The PowerConf 300’s autofocus is also much more responsive than the C930e; as I experimented with different viewing distances from the webcam, the autofocus adjusted my mug accordingly.

According to Anker, this extra visual boost is due (at least in part) to the webcam’s edge-based machine-learning platform, along with an enhanced CMOS sensor.

Anker also touts the PowerConf C300’s low-light capabilities, so I made some of my test calls after dark. Frontlit by my 27-inch desktop display and nothing else, the camera’s low-light tech illuminated a surprising amount of detail as I sat at my desk, and it filtered out more background noise than the Logitech C930e. What’s more, the lighting adjusts automatically (and dynamically) as you move around. In short, this webcam is ideal for just about any shooting environment. 

Anker PowerConf C300 webcam review: Audio quality

To test out the Anker PowerConf C300’s video and audio quality, I used it for several Google Meet and Zoom room chats, comparing it against both the mediocre webcam on my laptop (an LG Gram 17) and the aforementioned Logitech C930e. I also compared still photos from each webcam to evaluate image quality.

As I chatted with my friend over Zoom, she said my voice exhibited similar (read: exceptional) clarity as the C930e’s dual omnidirectional mics. And while the overall audio quality of these two webcams is excellent, my friend had to give the edge to Anker. If I were to guess, that’s because the PowerConf C300’s dual stereo microphones are paired with Active Gain Control and Active Noise Cancellation, which simultaneously boosts audio clarity while reducing background noise. (In fact, my friend noticed an instant reduction of background street noise before I even mentioned this feature to her). 

Rated for clear sound up to three meters away, the PowerConf 300’s super-sensitive mics could pick up my voice from across the apartment; during testing, some callers said they could hear me clear as day (albeit at a very low volume) from roughly 25 feet away. Another perk for the business crowd, and another point for Anker.

Anker PowerConf C300 webcam review: Additional features

The plug-and-play Anker PowerConf C300 is ready to use right out of the box, but the bundled software lets you tweak some of the webcam’s settings:

• Mode: If you’re not sure what individual settings to fiddle with, Anker makes it easy: you can choose between Custom, Personal, Live Streamer, and Conference Room mode for one-click adjustments.
• Resolution: Toggles between 360p, 720p, and 1080p.
• FPS: Switches between 30 or 60 frames per second. 
• Angle: Choose between 78, 90, or 115 degrees for your field of view. 
• Auto Frame vs. Self-Frame: Self-frame keeps your head in the middle of the screen as you move around; auto-frame detects multiple humans on screen, and adjusts the frame accordingly. 
• HDR: Adjusts the contrast between the lightest and darkest parts of an image.
• Anti-flicker: Helps reduce flicker when recording under artificial lighting. 

The AnkerWork software feels pretty bare-bones overall, but since you won’t need to access it very often, this is hardly a deal-breaker. In fact, I prefer simpler software for my laptop peripherals; a good webcam shouldn’t need to be constantly adjusted anyway. It should just work when you turn it on.

Note: Some of these features — such as Anti-flicker, Auto Frame and Self Frame — were somewhat buggy during my testing, but Anker has since upgraded its firmware, rectifying these issues and improving both the image and audio effects with each iteration. 

Anker PowerConf C300 webcam review: Verdict

At the end of the day (or night), the Anker PowerConf C300 is one of the best HD webcams we’ve tested to date. WThe PowerConf C300 isn't cheap, sure, but you get what you pay for with audio and video tech. In this case, you’re paying for way-wider-than-average viewing angles, gorgeous imagery, excellent low-light capabilities, and a top-quality mic, to boot. Add it all up, and the AnkerConf C300 is a solid investment for virtually all your video conferencing needs. 

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If you've used Zoom at all in the past five years, or even just signed up with the video-conferencing service, then you may have some money coming to you.

On Saturday (July 31), Zoom reached an $85 million agreement with two California law firms that had sued the company in federal court claiming that Zoom misled users about its encryption and security, had inadequate security that led to "Zoom bombings" and shared user data with Facebook, with Google and with LinkedIn without user consent or even user notification.

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Any consumer who paid for a Zoom subscription between March 30, 2016 through July 30, 2021 will be entitled to a reimbursement of 15% of their subscription costs, or $25, whichever is greater. The plaintiffs estimate the average reimbursement may about $35, but that eventually depends on how many people file claims.

Even consumers who had free Zoom accounts are entitled to claim $15 from the settlement fund. The presiding judge has yet to approve the settlement, but a hearing is set for Oct. 21. This lawsuit does not affect or concern enterprise or government clients of Zoom, who are not part of the plaintiff class.

Update: Zoom reached out to us after publication of this story and provided this statement, in full.

"The privacy and security of our users are top priorities for Zoom, and we take seriously the trust our users place in us. We are proud of the advancements we have made to our platform, and look forward to continuing to innovate with privacy and security at the forefront. "

How you can file a settlement claim against Zoom

Under the terms of the agreement, Zoom will provide the settlement administrators a list of eligible registered users, and the administrators will notify those users via email or regular post of their eligibility to file a claim. 

Those so notified "need only provide their names, mailing address, email and claim number," according to the settlement motion. 

If you don't get a notification but feel you're entitled to file a claim, then you need to provide "either an email associated with a Zoom account, a Zoom account number, or failing that, documentation and an attestation demonstrating that [you] are a Class Member."

Class members include any Zoom personal account holder who "registered, used, opened, or downloaded the Zoom Meetings Application" from March 30, 2016 until this past Saturday.

A settlement website is to be set up at http://www.zoommeetingsclassaction.com/. (It's not live yet, but the domain has been registered.) There will also be a settlement mailing address, email address and phone number that claim filers can contact.

Ambulance chasing, but with merit

The class-action suit is a merging of 14 different lawsuits filed against Zoom in March and April of 2020, soon after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown began in Europe and North America and use of Zoom by private clients skyrocketed. The 14 lawsuits were consolidated into one by a judge in May 2020.

A flurry of lawsuits being filed against a suddenly hot company seems opportunistic, and it is, but the plaintiffs' claims do have merit. 

Zoom did in fact mislead customers about the nature and security of what it claimed was "end-to-end encryption" but really wasn't, leading Zoom to settle a claim with the Federal Trade Commission in November 2020. 

Zoom did in fact incorporate Facebook code into its iOS app that sent Facebook information about each user's iPhone model, location, carrier and app usage, whether or not the user had a Facebook account.  Zoom users were not notified of this.

Zoom did in fact give users who paid for a special LinkedIn service a snapshot of the LinkedIn pages of other Zoom users, without telling those users that their LinkedIn pages were being shared over Zoom. The New York Times found that even if you signed into Zoom meetings under fake names, your real LinkedIn page would pop up.

Zoom also sent mobile-app usage data to Google's Firebase analytics service, which is less outrageous but is nonetheless the basis of separate lawsuits against Google.

The plaintiffs originally sought to hold Zoom liable for the actions of Zoom "bombers" who invaded Zoom meetings with content that was often shocking or rude. 

The court rejected those claims, ruling that Zoom was not responsible for the actions of third-party users per Section 230 of the federal law code.  But the court retained the plaintiffs' complaint that Zoom did not provide a "secure videoconferencing service."

Actions Zoom has to take

From now on, Zoom has to notify users during meetings about which other meeting participants can see who's on the call, which participants can save meeting data and which participants are using third-party apps that can interact with the Zoom software. (Some of these features are already in place.)

Zoom also agrees to:

• Notify users when their personal is data being shared with third parties such as Facebook, Google or LinkedIn
• Create staff positions dedicated to reporting incidents of Zoom bombing to law enforcement
• Create waiting rooms for attendees (already implemented)
• Create a "suspend meeting activities" button
• Enable "blocking of users from specific countries for a minimum of three years"
• Provide a centralized hub of privacy and security information for parents of kids who use Zoom for school

The lawyers for the plaintiffs are asking the judge to set aside 25% of the settlement, or $21.25 million, to pay their legal fees. That sounds like a lot, but it's less than the 33% that plaintiff's attorneys normally get. 

If any of the $85 million is left over after all claims have been settled, the extra money will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, two non-profit digital-rights groups. 

This week Google updated its Google Meet iOS and Android apps with new visual effects, filters, and masks that give you a few new ways to goof around on your next video call.

This is a big deal because the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing global lockdown has led to a surge in people using videoconferencing services to check in with colleagues, friends, and family members on a regular basis. Zoom was an early favorite, due in no small part to its built-in video filters and masks, and now Google is racing to keep up. 

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For now, the new Google Meet effects are only available in the Google Meet apps for iOS and Android. They're also currently limited to calls made with personal Gmail accounts -- if you jump into a call using a Google Workspace account, you'll be limited to a selection of blurring effects and more professional virtual backgrounds.

But once you do join a Google Meet from your personal Gmail account via one of the mobile apps, you'll now see a bunch of new filters, animated effects and cute masks that can (via the magic of augmented reality) be overlaid on your face. To access them, just tap the sparkly icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen during a Google Meet call. 

If these new effects look a little familiar, it's because they're very similar to the video and AR effects already available to folks who use the Google Duo video chat service. Unlike Google Meet, which launched in 2017 as a business-focused videoconferencing service with both mobile and browser apps, Google Duo debuted in 2016 as a mobile-only video call app tied to actual phone numbers. 

Both video calling services have seen significant upgrades over the past few years, especially during the COVID-19 lockdown, which caused Google Meet use to skyrocket and prompted Google to pivot Meet's focus from business to personal use. That's why Google integrated Meet directly into Gmail last summer, and around the same time 9to5Google reported that the titan of search was planning to eventually replace Duo with Meet. 

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Microsoft is planning a series of major updates to Microsoft Teams to help smooth the transition to hybrid working patterns.

While some people have now returned to the office or are contemplating doing so in countries where Covid-19 is under control, many are likely to shift to a mixture of days spent working-from-home and days in the office. Microsoft recognizes that, and has been working on a series of new features to "put everyone on equal footing" wherever they're working. 

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“To work effectively in hybrid and asynchronous models, people need a super-rich canvas that both creates and maintains context before, during, and after the meeting,” wrote Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 in a blog post explaining the upcoming changes. 

One way of doing this is the introduction of dynamic widgets, which allow workers to create anything from tables to task lists within Teams, work on them together in real time, and then copy and paste to other chat threads or Outlook with the data still synchronized.

There are other smaller but extremely welcome changes coming, too. You’ll now be able to pin messages, ensuring that key information isn’t lost in a sea of background chatter. You’ll be able to quote messages you’re replying to, as well, meaning that the context of what you’re writing won’t be lost on other chat participants. And you’ll soon be able to co-author meeting notes and action lists, with the text automatically imported to OneNote after the catch-up ends. 

 The remote social divide 

While these are sensible steps to ensure that remote workers aren’t left at a practical disadvantage when collaborating with their office-based teammates, Microsoft is also looking to deal with problems that are harder to pinpoint. 

Unintentionally, remote workers can often be forgotten when they’re not physically present, and Microsoft is hoping that a change in layout to Teams Rooms will help reduce this problem. 

The new design will see remote participants getting more screen space to give them “a greater sense of physical presence in the meeting room.” If said room has two screens, the remote workers will be spread across both, giving them an even greater presence.

Elsewhere, the Microsoft Viva Insights app for Teams is tackling one of the more elusive issues of remote working: isolation and its effect on mental health. Wellness software Headspace will be integrated into the app later this month, allowing employees to work through guided meditation and mindfulness exercises, helping them prepare for a big presentation or unwind and switch off before calling it a day. It also offers integration with Focus mode, where music and timers can help you work without getting distracted. 

“Back-to-back meetings increase stress and make it harder to stay engaged and focused,” wrote Malavika Rewari, a senior product manager from the Microsoft 365 marketing team, noting that weekly meeting time had more than doubled in Teams since the start of the pandemic. “In just a few minutes a day, meditation and mindfulness with Headspace can help you reduce stress and improve focus.”  

These improvements certainly sound beneficial, though it’s hard to know how many of the cultural changes to the way we work will stick once the virus is well and truly under control. Many businesses may want employees back in the office for better collaboration or simply because they want to keep a closer eye on their workforce. Others will jump at the opportunity to save on building and equipment costs by keeping workers remote. 

With the changes to Teams, which will be rolled out over the course of 2021, Microsoft hopes to be the collaboration software of choice, no matter which way the wind ends up blowing. 

But it faces plenty of competition on this front: Google is also rolling out updates to Meet and is eliminating the need to pay to access Google Workspace, as it also goes after the world's hybrid workers.

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Google Meet is getting a much-needed range of updates to make the platform's hand-raise feature work more effectively.

The changes, which have been fully outlined in an update log from Google (spotted by 9to5Google), might seem like minor additions on the surface, but with remote working still a reality for many people, they’re very welcome all the same. Essentially, they're about making the hand-raise feature “easier to notice and address” — an upgrade Meet most definitely needs if it's to take on Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

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The most immediately apparent aspect of this update will be the “updated and improved visual icon and animation” that will play whenever a user raises their hand. Of course, while this animation is pretty flashy, it actually does very little to improve functionality. Thankfully, this isn’t all the update contains. 

Slightly more useful additions added by this update include the tiles of users with a raised hand being moved to a more visible spot in grid view, so a speaker is less likely to miss any hands in the air. Plus, there will now be an audio notification when a participant first raises their hand, as well as an alert displaying the number of raised hands and the order in which they were first raised.  

Finally, “a participant’s hand will be automatically lowered after they speak.” This will be extremely useful for those forgetful coworkers who spend entire meetings with a raised hand after failing to put it back down. 

All these features will be enabled by default and are being currently being rolled out to Google Workspace users. Google notes, though, that they won't be available on G Suite Basic or for users with a personal Google Account. Instead, they appear to be designed for use primarily by those using WorkSpace as part of a larger organization. 

These changes come in the wake of Google eliminating the need to pay to access Google Workspace earlier this month. It seems the tech giant is aggressively going after competing services like Zoom and Teams, so expect to see more ease-of-use updates in the future.

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This week Google eliminated the need to pay to access its Google Workspace suite of productivity tools, rolling the web-based tools out to everyone with a Gmail account. It's a bold move that's clearly driven by Google's desire to take on Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams in the space for free remote collaboration tools.

That means most of us will soon gain access to a redesigned Gmail that brings with it some extra features aimed at making it easier to share and collaborate with others. It's a big move for Google, though you might not even notice the change unless you set your Chat preference to "Google Chat" (instead of "Classic Hangouts") in the Chat and Meet section of your Gmail settings menu.

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When you do change your Chat preference, you should notice a new "Rooms" tab in Gmail that's separate from the Chat tab. Rooms were previously only available to paying customers of Google Workspace, but starting this week they're available to everyone. (Conversely, free G Suite accounts will have to start paying by July 2022.)

Right now, these Rooms basically look like standalone group chats, but Google says it plans to roll out updates over the summer that will redesign the interface and add in features like topic threading, presence indicators, and custom statuses (AKA away messages) as it rebrands Rooms into Spaces.

The goal seems to be getting Gmail's billions of users to start using Spaces the way so many of us use Slack and Teams: as central gathering points for collaborators to chat, share links, leave comments, and launch meetings. It's all part of the grand vision of a unified Google Workspace available to everyone that the company put forth at its I/O developer conference earlier this year, when it unveiled Smart Canvas. 

Pitched as the connective tissue of Google Workspace, Smart Canvas is a key part of this Gmail redesign, and you should be able to check it out for yourself right now: simply open a Google Doc and type the @ symbol to open a small window (Google calls these "smart chips") with a context-sensitive list of people to tag and documents/calendar events to embed. 

More smart chip functionality and more features in general will be added to Google Workspace products like Sheets and Meet throughout 2021 to make them more competitive with free collaboration tools like Slack. 

Between now and September for example, Google expects to launch the Google Meet Companion Mode (pictured in a mockup above) it previewed at I/O last month. Designed for the increasingly common hybrid workplace where meetings will often contain both in-person and remote participants, Companion Mode will let physically present meeting participants access Google Meet tools like chat, screen-sharing, and polls, either by launching the app on their phone or via a separate web app.

Google Workspace Individual

The search giant also began selling a new version of Workspace this week: Google Workspace Individual, a subscription service targeted at individual business owners. Those who pay for Workspace Individual can expect to gain access to better video meeting tools, personalized email marketing, smart booking services, and other features Google intends to roll out in the future. 

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