If you’re sick of staring at a grid of faces during your endless Zoom calls, a new virtual background can help. Turn it on, and you, your colleagues, friends, and family members will be virtually imposed in the same virtual space, making it appear as if you’re sitting next to each other rather than conversing thousands of miles apart.
Do you want to give it a shot? Here’s how to use Zoom’s Immersive View to join your coworkers in a new virtual space.
- Start the Zoom meeting on your desktop if you are the meeting or webinar host (it will be enabled by default for all free and single pro accounts using Zoom 5.6.3 or higher). You’ll find the option to enable Immersive View in the top right corner, next to Speaker or Gallery View. Select Immersive View from the drop-down menu.
- Choose one of Zoom’s pre-created scenes to place your meeting participants in. Layouts for groups of up to 25 people are available, as well as some for smaller groups. You can also upload your own.
- Your meeting participants or webinar hosts will now be placed in the same virtual background and will appear on every participant’s screen (unless they are using an older version of Zoom, in which case they will see participants in either Gallery or Speaker View with a black background). Hosts can also move and resize participants’ images within a scene.
The ‘Immersive View’ feature is enabled by default for all Free and single Pro accounts running Zoom 5.6.3 or higher, and it can also be enabled via the web portal for all other account types.
Users on Zoom desktop and mobile apps that do not support the ‘Immersive View’ feature will continue to see other meeting participants in either ‘Gallery View’ or ‘Speaker View’ when the feature is enabled.