Google Meet will soon allow users to add images or a blur effect to backgrounds on video calls, reports 9to5Google.
In addition, Google told The Verge that it is working on several other features that should make Meet more competitive against rival videoconferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
These new options include real-time captioning, a low-light mode, hand-raising, and a tile view of up to 49 other people on a video call.
No release date for the upcoming features has been given, but Google is understood to be previewing some of them to education and enterprise customers.
Google made its premium Meet service free to use in April, and the company followed that up by announcing Meet integration for Gmail on iOS and Android.
Anyone interested in using Google Meet can download the Hangouts Meet iOS app from the App Store or head to meet.google.com to use the web browser version.
![Apple Pulls Keynote, Pages and Numbers From App Store [Update: Back]](https://images.macrumors.com/t/Okb7kitB_gNr6qe5Pex9nQIysD8=/112x112/article-new/2026/01/Apple-Creator-Studio-iWork-suite.jpg)
Top Rated Comments
Yeah like anyone’s webcam is positioned like that.
Google is improving Google Meet while Apple is not even working on creating an educational platform that’s suitable for remote learning.
Schools will be closed the next school year. My son’s school will be using Google Classroom. If they bring these new features (especially raising hands) by the beginning of the school year, this will make Google Classroom even more awesome.