By now, most of us have given up trying to contribute during a crowded video call, and instead just mute our mics and politely nod in agreement until it’s time to hang up. Six months after we desperately needed it, Cameron Hunter has come up with a clever solution to help you respond during video calls without having to unmute a mic or awkwardly battle with everyone else trying to get a word in at the same time.
Hunter, who’s currently an engineer at Netflix and formerly worked for Twitter and Amazon, took inspiration from the stylized and emphatic text bubbles used in comic books. As he revealed on Twitter with a video demonstration yesterday, using Snapchat’s Lens Studio he created a tool that automatically triggers pop-up overlays with words like “yes,” “no,” “awesome,” or “question” when you make certain hand or facial gestures, allowing him to respond or grab someone else’s attention without having to utter a single word.
Best of all, this isn’t a hack that requires special hardware or even a basic know-how of code repositories like Github. If you want to use Hunter’s VC Lens filter, all you have to do is download the free Snap Camera software for your computer and then the lens itself, which can be found here. It should be compatible with any video calling software, including Zoom, Skype, and whatever Google’s video chat software of the day is by simply changing the source camera in their respective settings to the Snap Camera.