It’s time to bomb work meetings with the party emoji.
In a blog post, Google announced the launch of emoji reactions in Google Meet, a feature that allows call attendees to express emotions and reactions directed at their coworkers during video meetings…with emojis.
The company says that emoji reactions are available now for Google Meet sessions on the web, Meet Hardware devices, and iOS. Google says that Android is “coming soon.” It’s pretty funny that Google is bringing the feature to iOS before Android but we’ve seen that before.
The new feature can be accessed by clicking on the new “smile” icon in the meeting controls. Once clicked, emoji options will pop up to choose from, including a thumbs up, clapping hands, and a heart.
These reactions will show as a small badge in the sender’s video tile and floating up the left side of the screen. When there are multiple user engagements, you’ll see a burst of emojis on the left side of your screen.
In addition to offering a number of emoji options, users will also be able to choose the skin color that best represents them. That choice will be saved to your profile.
To share a reaction, select the smile icon in the control bar to get the reaction bar. You can hover on this bar to select the skin tone of your choice, which will then be applied to all emojis subject to change color.
This is not the only recent feature that Google has added to Meet to improve the video conferencing experience. Back in January of last year, the company also began rolling out live captions that, over time, continue to add support for more languages.
So, if you’re in a Google Meet meeting tomorrow, get ready to emoji bomb the entire meeting. No one is going to be expecting it.
