7 top hacks to make your Zoom meeting with family & friends interesting
Zoom daily chit-chat with your family; Zoom weekly gossip with your best friends; Zoom date with your bae; Zoom online classes; Zoom birthday celebrations; Zoom Zumba sessions; Zoom concerts; Zoom weddings, and whatnot. The amount of impact this video communication tool had created on us in such a short span of time was massive.
After the outbreak of COVID-19 and the widespread lockdown rules, the first thing that went viral was obviously Dalgona Coffee, but it was all about Zoom events after that.
Zoom has become the talk of every group of people within a matter of months, as the whole world resumed their daily activities remotely and found the Zoom app their new favourite. Although the video communication tool was founded in 2011, it saw an immense increase in its usage during the Covid-19 crisis. People were looking to connect with their beloved ones in the middle of social distancing.
This blog post talks about 7 top hacks of ‘Zoom’ that can make your next Zoom meetings with family and friends more interesting and lively. It will describe the benefits of 7 key features, how to enable it in your Zoom meetings, and a bonus tip about each feature to make you a ‘Pro’ at using Zoom. Having focused on the informal Zoom
meetings, this blog post aims at taking you through fun and helpful
content about Zoom features.
Zoom meetings with your family and friends:
1. Ensure security with ‘Waiting Room’ -
Are you worried about an uninvited person joining your Zoom meeting without your knowledge?
If yes, then I can tell you a way to not worry about it and ensures security throughout your meetings.
Zoom has a feature called ‘Waiting Room’ that allows you to grant permission to the participants to enter into your meetings. As a meeting host, you can enable the ‘Waiting Room’ feature and decide whom to give permission to enter.
You can also ensure that the right person gets access by communicating with the waiting participants via messages.
To enable 'Waiting Room': go to Settings > select View More Settings> and enable Waiting Room.
Bonus tip: By using Waiting Room, you and your dear one's secrets are safe within the four walls of Zoom
2. Your very own ‘Personal Meeting Room’ -
Are you tired of scheduling meetings every day when you connect with your family and friends?
You don’t have to do that in Zoom. It’s ‘Personal Meeting Room’ feature gets it covered.
Personal Meeting Room, a virtual meeting room permanently reserved for you, makes your daily Zoom interactions with family and friends much easier. It can be accessed with your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) or personal link, and it is ideal for the interactions with people you meet regularly.
You can either start instant meetings with your PMI, or you can schedule a meeting that uses your PMI. Once a participant has the link to your PMI, they can join the meeting at any time when it is active, unless you lock the meeting or use the Waiting Room feature to admit participants individually.
To use your PMI for Instant Meetings: go to Meetings> enable Use Personal Meeting ID (PMI).
Bonus tip: It should not be used for back-to-back meetings or people you meet occasionally.
3. Add a ‘Virtual background’ -
Do you find clearing up the background mess a mandatory task before a Zoom meeting?
If yes, then you no more have to care. Zoom has a smarter option for you.
Zoom provides a feature called ‘Virtual Background’ that allows you to set an image or video as your background during a Zoom meeting. You can hide the background clutter and remove distractions without any difficulty.
To set a virtual background: go to Settings > select Background & Filters > select Virtual Background> choose a default image or select your own image or video from the gallery.
Bonus tip: You can also use this feature to highlight your brand logo in the background
4. Go for ‘Touch-up your appearance’ –
Now that the background is set, do you think the bad lighting or tiredness on your face makes you look dull and less confident for the Zoom meeting?
If yes, then Zoom has an instant fix to your this concern as well.
Zoom has included a feature called ‘Touch-up My Appearance,’ which provides a good focus on your whole screen when you enable it, and it even outs your skin tone and improves the lighting instantly.
To enable the feature: go to Settings > select Video tab> enable Touch-up my appearance.
Bonus tip: You can use the slider to adjust the filter effect based on your preference
5. Fun time with 'Video Filters' -
Did you ever wish that your Zoom meetings should become more playful and entertaining like Instagram or Snapchat?
Well, yes. It is possible to add fun elements to your meetings by using Zoom Video Filters.
Zoom Video Filters can make your meetings with family and friends an entertaining and fun experience. You can either choose a colour filter like B&W, Sepia, etc. or choose a Snapchat filter from the many options available to your camera.
To get the filters: go to Settings > select Background & Filters tab > click Video Filters > choose your favourite filter.
Next to Video Filters, there are Studio Effects that helps you to do your virtual makeup.
Bonus tip: You can use these Video Filters for online birthday celebrations, to cheer up your friend’s mood, etc.
6. 'Suppress background noise' -
Does the street dog’s barking or squeaky noise from your fan disturb your Zoom meetings?
It is a quite commonly faced issue, and it can be sorted out in Zoom in no time.
You can use the ‘Suppress background noise’ feature to remove disturbing noises that can catch the participants' microphones' attention. Background noises such as fan noise, dogs barking, keyboard typing, etc. will be filtered out to create an improved meeting experience.
Zoom automatically makes the background noise reduction by default, but the ‘Suppress background noise’ feature allows you to change it to be more or less intense based on your environment.
To activate this feature: go to Settings> Select Audio tab> Click the drop-down menu with "suppress background noise"> Choose any option (Auto, Low, Medium, High) based on your need.
To activate this feature in Zoom mobile app: go to Settings> Select Meetings> Disable the toggle next to 'Use Original Sound.'
Bonus tip: The ‘high’ suppress background noise option will greatly remove the background distractions, but it may increase CPU utilization.
7. Learn the Zoom 'keyboard shortcuts' -
Don’t we all love to use shortcuts when we type or use our laptop?
Zoom doesn’t make us unhappy with this as well.
There are several shortcut keys available to use during Zoom meetings to quickly access features and navigate the settings. Among them, the most useful ones for me are:
- Alt + I = Open invite window
- Alt + A = Mute/unmute audio
- Alt + M: Mute/unmute audio for everyone except meeting host
- Alt + V = Turn video on/off
- Alt + F1 = Switch to active speaker view in video meeting.
- Alt + Y = Raise/lower hand to talk
Bonus tip: These shortcuts are specifically for Zoom desktop client for Windows. However, they do have shortcuts for mobile apps as well.
Summary:
Zoom’s goal has always been to keep its existing users happy and build a video communication tool that works with all kinds of users. Just like how it provides multiple advanced features for business usage, it does for informal usage also.
Although not every feature explained here works on the mobile version, the desktop versions of Zoom support all of it, and it’s really cool to experience it.
Adopting these features could certainly make a difference in your next Zoom meetings with family and friends and can have a fun-filled experience.
Hope you can have a fun-filled experience with your dear ones in Zoom like how I did with my best friends ❤
Happy Zooming!
Kindly check out the video summary of the blog post below:
Do connect with me at 📧 perhapsawish@gmail.com if you know of any other interesting Zoom feature for informal meetings. Please let me know your views about this blog post in the comments section. If you find this post helpful, share it with a friend or on your social media today!
Much love.
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