Google Meet is now free for everyone to use. The search giant has finished its rollout, and anyone with an email address—a Gmail address, that is—can use it to hold free video chats. Meet isn’t as fully-featured as other video chat apps, but a few useful browser extensions can add in much-needed functionality. Oh, and they’re free, too.
Before I get to those, one quick word about Meet: It’s true that Google is working to give the service extra features like a tiled layout that can show you up to 16 people at once (what others might call a “grid view”), as well as low-light and noise-cancellation modes to enhance your appearance and audio. You might not need some of the extensions I’m going to recommend once these drop; Google’s changes might even interfere with an extension. If that happens, at least you’ll know why.
Google Meet Grid View
If you don’t want to wait for Google to roll out its “grid view” look for Google Meet, use this Chrome extension to get one yourself. Given all the changes Google has been making to Meet, it’s possible this extension might work one day and be messed up the next.
As an alternative, you can also try this other Google Meet Grid View extension, which will probably be more updated than the one linked above. (And if you need an extension for Firefox or Edge, you’ll find those here, too.)
Nod-Reactions for Google Meet
The name kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Use the Nod extension and you’ll be able to give others in your meeting a quick reaction to whatever it is they’re doing—saving you the inconvenience of having to unmute your mic and wait for a lull in the conversation to interject with your pithy comment. A caveat: Make sure everyone in the Google Meet chat has this extension installed or you’ll be reacting into the ether.
Meet Attendance
Whether you’re that boss or just an overworked teacher trying to frantically transition your lesson plans into a virtual environment, Meet Attendance is a great extension you can use to track who shows up for your meetings. It’s less practical if you have a weekly meeting with your Dungeons & Dragons friends, but if you’re trying to manage an organization or a bunch of six-year-olds—which sometimes feels like the same thing—this extension can help! (Here’s a Firefox version of this app’s concept, too.)
Google Meet Push to Talk
This extension replicates my favorite Zoom feature—one I’m always trying to convince my friends to use. Instead of sitting there with your microphone un-muted all the time (ugh), leave it muted and just mash the space bar whenever you need to say something. This feature isn’t baked into Google Meet by default, but install Push to Talk and it will be.
Tactiq Pins for Google Meet
This is a quirky one. Assuming the presenters on your Google Meet chat are fairly understandable—unlike me, who talks way too fast—this extension can automatically create a transcript of your meetings. It does this by recording all the live captions that Google Meet creates, which means you’ll have to first enable that feature in your meeting before Tactiq can do anything. Once your meeting is done, saving everything it recorded is simple. And while the transcript might not be 100% accurate, it’ll be close. (And a lot better than having to transcribe a meeting yourself. Ugh.)