Google Meet is a simple and clean video conference app from Google. It has a lot of unique features like live captions, joining the meeting without the internet, etc. However, it does miss out on a few features comparing to services like Zoom that can improve the usability of Google Meet.
Nonetheless, most of these features can be added to Google Meet with the help of Chrome Extensions. Let’s check out some Chrome Extensions for Google Meet.
Best Chrome Extensions for the Google Meet
1. Meet for Teachers
As the name says, this extension is mostly useful for teachers and serves only one purpose that it blocks join requests once enabled. So once the class started, teachers don’t need to waste time admitting everyone into the class.
You can just click on the extension icon at the top corner of the browser and enable the toggle beside Lock Google Meet and that’s it, this extension blocks out all the students who are attending late to the class.
Install Meet for Teachers
2. Meet Attendance
Meet Attendance is another chrome extension useful for teachers. All you need to do is just add the extension to your browser and that’s it. Whenever you start a meet, it will create a spreadsheet and note down all the names of the people who have attended the meeting. It also notes down the time they joined and the time left out. So you don’t need to think about anything while running the class.
You can access the spreadsheet anytime frothe option in the people’s tab. You can even toggle off the automation and create a spreadsheet manually right from the Google Meet if you want.
For more details about the attendance taking process and setup, you can check out this article on “How to take attendance on Google Meet.”
Install Meet Attendance
3. Nod Chrome Extension
This is another extension useful for online classes. To reduce the noise, you might need to mute everyone in the Meet. But if any of the students wanna talk to you, they cannot respond.
Nod Chrome Extensions provide emoji-based interaction. It doesn’t provide many emojis except for a few useful ones like raising the hand, agreement, and disagreement, clap, goodbye, etc. The most important one is raising the hand so that you can unmute them to speak.
This creates a distraction-free class and also provides the facility for the students to respond without causing any distractions. Anyhow, in order to make this extension work, both parties have to install the extension.
Install Nod Extension
4. Snap Camera
Snap Camera isn’t a Chrome extension, but it’s software that you can install on Windows and Mac. If you are looking for filters that you can add on Google Meet, the Snap Camera app is the way to go as it provides an option to add Snapchat filters on Google Meet.
To use them just open the Snap Camera app and select the filter. Now, in the Google Meet, open settings, and in the video section, select the Snap Camera in the Camera option. That’s it, you can now have Snapchat filters on Google Meet.
To change the filter, you have to use the Snap Camera app.
Download Snap Camera
5. Google Meet Transcribe
Google Meet has a Live captions feature that isn’t available on any Video Conference service. This extension uses that functionality and takes it to a whole new level by taking notes of all those captions. It automatically saves them as a Google Doc file in your Google Drive.
However, It doesn’t provide an option for you to configure and you cannot stop transcribe for any meeting. You can only delete it later.
Install Google Meet Transcribe
6. Google Meet Grid View
By default, the Grid view of the Google Meet supports only 16 people. It might be good enough for most scenarios. But if you wanted to take a look at all the people in the meet use this extension.
The best part is, you have a lot of options to tweak from enabling grid view by default to resizing the toolbar when the grid view is enabled. You can access all these settings right inside the meet in the top-right corner.
Install Google Meet Grid View
7. Google Meet Call Timer
This extension helps you track how much time you are spending on a video call. Just install the extension and attend the Google Meet. You can set the timer inside the Meet window and it looks clean, minimal, and perfectly blends into the Google Meet design style.
Anyhow, this timer can be only seen by you, and it does not automatically close the call. It makes a small beep sound and shows the timer in the red text indicating that your time is completed. If you are on a tight schedule or have some work, you can use this extension as a remainder.
Nonetheless, just knowing how much time you have been on the call is just a basic feature for every video conference app.
Install Google Meet Call Timer
8. Google Meet Breakout Rooms
Breakout Rooms is a feature that is available in Google Meet but only for Gsuite Enterprise customers. For everyone else, this extension can be handy. Breakout Rooms is useful to split the existing meeting into multiple sub-groups.
So that you can deal with everyone individually. You can add people manually to groups, change the layout, mute all, remove all, and also you have the option to broadcast your audio and video to all the rooms if you want.
With such a number of features, you can expect this extension is a bit confusing and needs a small learning curve to start using it.
Install Google Meet Breakout Rooms
9. Meet Chat Notifications
Chat feature in the Google Meet is great to send a quick text to all the people in the meeting. But for the viewer, it doesn’t give any notification sound, nor shows you the notification if you are not on the Meet tab. This extension completely solves the problem, it triggers a system notification when anyone messaged in the Meet.
So you can get notified even if you are not on the Meet tab and also get the notification sound instead of just a pop-up. Anyhow, you can’t go directly to the Meet tab by clicking on the notification.
To use this extension, make sure that you have enabled notifications for Chrome in the system settings.
Install Meet Chat Notifications
10. React
React is another fun-based extension to use Emojis and Gifs on Google Meet. Instead of just sending them like a chat message or pop-up notification, React sticks the emoji or Gif on your video feed. So in order to use this feature, you need to always enable the video option.
Among all the Emoji extensions on Google Meet, React can be considered as the best alternative as other parties don’t need to install the extension.
Install React
11. Google Meet Enhancement suite
This chrome extension adds multiple features such as push to talk, Auto-mute, shortcut to end the meet, skipping the join screen, automatically switching on a few features like live captions, etc.
Among all of them, I like the Auto Mute, Quick Leave and Auto-Join features. Pressing shift+K ends the meeting and you can skip the join screen. You can opt for a premium subscription of $7 per month and get even more features like dark mode, Picture-in-Picture view, hiding pop-up to add contacts, etc.
The only caveat being, some of these shortcuts even work in the chat function of the meet, so in case you are trying to press Shift+K in the chat, you will instantly leave the meet and there is no way to configure shortcuts on your own.
Install Google Meet Enhancement Suite
12. Quiz Master (Quinzel)
Quinzel extension enables the quiz feature on the Google Meet. To get started, both parties need to install this extension. Later any one can choose to become quiz master and conduct a quiz with their own questions or they can conduct a quiz with random trivia questions provided by the extension.
Other people can click on the “Answer” button and the quiz master can see the one who has clicked on the “Answer” button first. Later they can answer the question in the Google Meet video call. This extension acts like a buzzer rather than a complete full-fledged quiz app where people can even provide their answers.
It also has options like giving points to the one who has answer right, negative points, etc. You can check out this article to know more about the setup and conducting quizzes on Google Meet
Install Quiz Master (Quinzel)
Final Words
There are few more extensions like the Party button which gives a party popper animation but only visible to the one who installed the extension. Tactiq pins for Google Meet to save live captions, etc. Anyhow, my favorite is the enhancement suite, what’s yours? Let me know in the comments section.
Related: Zoom Cloud Meetings vs Google Meet: Best Choice For You?
