Video calling may never recreate the same feeling of meeting with someone face-to-face, but thanks to Google Meet's new 'immersive backgrounds,' your video chats are about to get a lot more realistic. While video calling apps have been around for years, they exploded in popularity in 2020 thanks to COVID-19. Even with many people gradually returning to 'normal' lifestyles, plenty of folks still rely on these apps for remote work, schooling, family gatherings, etc.
One app that's been at the forefront of the video calling explosion is Google Meet. There are a few reasons for Meet's success over the course of the pandemic. It removed certain video calling limits for all users, is available on virtually every platform, and continues to add new features to keep the experience fresh.
Today, Google's continuing with that last point with the introduction of immersive backgrounds. Google Meet first added custom background support in November 2020, enabling users to replace their actual background with an image of their choosing. Google expanded on this idea in April with video backgrounds, and now in November 2021, we're getting immersive backgrounds. Users can choose between two main backgrounds (including a cafe or condo), each of which is fully customizable to your exact liking.
How To Use Google Meet's Immersive Backgrounds
Using an immersive background in Google Meet follows the same steps as any other background. Before joining a Google Meet call, select the Effects button (the one that looks like a sparkle emoji) and choose the background you want to use. Immersive backgrounds are represented by an icon in the upper-right corner with a play and sparkle icon. If you want to change your background after joining a video call, click/tap the menu button and select 'Apply visual effects.'
As mentioned above, both the condo and cafe backgrounds can be customized in a number of ways. The condo background can be used with a day or night theme, while the cafe background shows lifelike weather effects in the background — including a sunny, rainy, and snowy backdrop. Google says these customizable backgrounds will "help dispersed teams better represent their current time zone and climate." Whether or not this has any functional benefit is for you to decide, but it's undoubtedly a fun way to make your calls feel more representative of the area you're in.
The only downside of immersive backgrounds is their availability. Immersive backgrounds are only available to people who pay for Google Workspace. If you use Google Meet for free, you'll need to sit this one out. It's possible Google expands immersive backgrounds to everyone down the road, but for the time being, you'll need to pay up to access them.
Source: Google