Attention all multitaskers: Google Meet makes its picture-in-picture feature automatic

Credit: Google

Google Meet knows it can be challenging to stay on a single tab during meetings, and it’s here to help.

For all you habitual tab-shifters out there — I count myself among your ranks — Google Meet recently made a picture-in-picture feature an automatic part of its service. What does that mean? As I discovered this morning, when you leave the tab while in a Google Meet, the call will automatically shrink to a smaller size and appear in the bottom-right part of your screen.

This feature used to be an option you could turn on during a meeting, though some, like myself, likely didn’t know it existed. It’s quite helpful, especially if you want to look something up while discussing a work project. Now, you’re not tied to the Google Meet tab.

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The feature, at least for now, is available only to users on a computer using Google Chrome.

Wrote Google’s Workspace team in a blog post: “This simple yet impactful update will help ensure your meeting stays visible and accessible if you need to switch tabs to take notes, view meeting-related documents, and more.”

I’ve found the tool helpful thus far. It allows me to attend a meeting and to whatever else I might need to do.

The feature’s gradual rollout started on Monday. It appeared for me on Thursday and could appear for others over the next week or so. For all you multi-taskers out there, welcome to a new world.

Tim Marcin is a culture reporter at Mashable, where he writes about food, fitness, weird stuff on the internet, and, well, just about anything else. You can find him posting endlessly about Buffalo wings on Twitter at @timmarcin.

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