How to set Background on Google Meet

The world has turned into a place where Zoom and Google Meet has become part of our daily lives to do any sort of community-related stuff like socializing or even office work. If you are reading this way in the future, you should google about how the world turned upside down in 2020.

So, when you are doing video calls in Google Meet or Zoom, your background in the camera might not be very great because you are most probably in your living room or even your bedroom with a nice shirt and no pants on. 😂 But there are ways to actually change your background to a beach (the most famous one) or any other wallpaper.

Recommended: Simple steps to Enable Tiled or Grid view on Google Meet

So, how do we change background in Google Meet??

There are two ways to do this.

1. Use Snap Camera
2. Use Virtual backgrounds for Google Meet Chrome Extension

How do we change background using Snap Camera

1. Download and install Snap Camera from Snap Inc’s official site. This is a software that is available for both Mac and PC computers. You could read the agreement and choose to agree. Once that is done, click on Download for MAC button.
   
   
2. The file is around 80MB and you have initiate installation right away. Please provide access for installation by giving access to the Snap Camera application.
   
   
3. The App would need access to your Microphone and Camera to do its main job of being a Camera tool.
   
4. Once you give access to those, you will be taken to the Home screen where you will see the picture from the camera without any background.
   
   
5. So, adding background is actually a lens filter that you have to do the add to the normal camera setup. once you choose anything you would like, it will get applied to your camera image.
   
6. For example, in the image below, you see the beach lens is applied to the camera image, and as you can see the person has a beach background behind. You could choose any filter that you want to place in the camera image. Once this is done. It will automatically be saved as a separate camera.
   
7. Then Open the Google Meet Meeting and make sure it’s in progress and the camera is turned on. By default, it will open the default camera without the actual background and no changes. To change the background to the one we modified in SnapCamera, you will have to open the Settings.
   
   
8. Tap on the three dots at the bottom right corner of the Meeting screen. In the menu that appears, choose Settings.
   
9. The Setting will open in a separate window. Go to the Video Tab.
   
   
10. In the Video Tab, Under the camera section, click on the dropdown and choose Snap Camera. This will show the camera that you saved earlier in the Snap Camera application.
    
11. Once you choose the camera will change automatically to the chosen one.

There are some users who have mentioned that this doesn’t work effectively and it requires a restart between changing the settings in Google meet.

To have a detailed understanding of how to do this, watch this video below.

How do we change background using Chrome Extension

Go to Chrome Store and search for Virtual backgrounds for Google Meet or even click this link. Install this extension in the Google Chrome browser.

Before going into the steps let me make it very clear that the reviews of this method are not very good. The users have mentioned that the cropping is not accurate and it looks weird and all. But this method definitely works. More than 100,000+ users have downloaded this extension.

1. Install Extension from Chrome Store.
2. Once installed, make sure you pin it in the Chrome URL bar.
3. After that open the meeting, and make sure you can see yourself on the screen. Once you are there click on the Virtual backgrounds extension icon at the top right corner.
   
   
4. Once you click on it, you will see the dropdown with all the possible backgrounds. At the top right corner, you will see the virtual background enabled. If you want to disable it, you can do that too.
   
5. Scroll down to see the list of all the backgrounds available.
   
   
6. Please make a note that there is only a limited number of backgrounds available in this plugin.

Also, there is no option to add a custom background either. So, that’s the downside. If you are okay with that, this extension works just fine.

Bonus: How to Record Google Meet

Beyond all these options, it’s always better if Google Meet adds this feature natively because a lot of people use this feature and Google can take advantage of that info if they really want to conquer this new CORONA Virtual meeting space.