Google Meet’s redesign starts rolling out on the desktop — but bugs remain

Source: Apoorva Bhardwaj / Android Central

Google last month announced a new Google Meet interface would be rolling out to Chromebooks and desktop operating systems, and now the company says that it’s now available for some. Despite that, Google notes that there is some weirdness in the app.

First though, let’s talk about the new Meet look. The new look adapts itself for larger meetings, letting more callers be visible at a time. It also allowed users to resize their own tile if they wanted to keep themselves visible, rather than the current all or nothing option.

So, what’s wrong with the Google Meet interface? Google highlights the following known issues.

1) You might notice some unexpected behavior such as missing video tiles or the captions being cut off. This is caused by 3rd Party Meet extensions and you can read more here about its implications and next steps.

2) Users experiencing a “mirroring effect” when screen sharing: We recommend that you “share a tab” instead of a “window” or “entire screen” for a smooth presenting experience. Additionally, when sharing a tab, make sure that you are sharing the right tab/different tab than your meeting tab.

3) Users on a Windows device while using a chrome browser might experience flickering on the presented content: A restart of your Chrome browser should assist with the issue.

4) Blue outline is occasionally on a non-speaking participant: A fix for this is on the way and should be live soon. With the new Meet UI, you should now see a blue outline around the active speakers’ tile

From looking at them, most of these issues appear to be quite light or non-breaking. If you want to use Meet’s new look and don’t mind these issues, you probably can.

In the meantime, if you’ve upgraded to the Meet interface, Google will offer you the option to revert to the previous version of Meet before June 10th, or up until Google has rolled out the update to 100% of all users. At this point, only 1% of Meet users have had this rolled out to them so far.

Google Meet remains one of Google’s best video conferencing apps, with Duo a close second. Google has currently made all of its premium features free, though it plans to rescind that pretty soon.

Wear’s kids mode?

Apple Watch is available to families, now it’s Googles turn with Wear OS

There are a lot of smartwatch options out there for kids; some are good and some are very bad. Even the good ones have an ecosystem all their own, taking parents and kids out of their comfort zone. Apple found a way for parents to allow their kids to safely use its wearable, and now it’s time for Google to do the same with Wear OS.