In the world of virtual meetings, tools like Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams are becoming increasingly popular. Online meetings have witnessed a significant surge, growing from 48% to 77% between 2020 and 2022. Chances are you’ve participated in an online meeting, and you are probably familiar with the traditional method of raising your hand – clicking on a button. Well, with Google Meet, that’s about to change. According to an official blog post, Google Meet is now equipped with the ability to detect when you physically raise your hand in front of the camera. This simple gesture, held for a few seconds, will alert the meeting host and participants of your intention to speak, eliminating the need for an on-screen button click.
Gesture detection functions identically to clicking the hand-raise button in Google Meet’s control bar. Once you raise your hand, a new icon will appear above your camera feed, visible to all meeting participants. This short-loading icon provides an opportunity to retract the gesture, but you have to be fast, as it disappears after a second or two. Upon disappearing, the hand-raise icon will become visible to other participants, just like when using the control bar button.
To ensure accurate gesture detection, keep your camera enabled and your hand clearly visible to the camera, away from your face and body. The gesture detection feature will not activate while you are an active speaker; it will resume once you are no longer actively speaking.
Gesture detection is disabled by default, requiring users to manually enable it. To activate the feature during a meeting, follow these steps:
- Click on “More Options”
- Select “Settings”
- On the left-hand side, click “Reactions”
- Toggle on “Hand Raise Gesture”
Unfortunately, Google has not yet developed a method for lowering your hand. Once your hand is raised, you must manually press the hand-raise button to lower it. Gesture detection is currently rolling out to select Google Workspace business and education plan users, including:
- Google Workspace Business Plus
- Business Standard
- Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Starter
- Education Plus
- The Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers
- Google Workspace Individual subscribers
At this time, it is unclear whether this feature will be made available to a wider range of users in the future. The Hand Raise Gesture feature is gradually rolling out, and it may take a few weeks for some users to see it.
