Google Meet rolls out gesture detection: Raise your hand without clicking a button

In the world of virtual meetings, tools like Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams are becoming increasingly popular. Online meetings saw a significant increase, from 48% to 77% between 2020 and 2022. Chances are you’ve participated in an online meeting, and you’re probably familiar with the traditional method of raising your hand: clicking on a button. Well, with Google Meet, that’s about to change. According to a manager blog post, Google Meet now comes with the ability to detect when you physically raise your hand in front of the camera. This simple gesture, held for a few seconds, will alert the meeting host and participants of your intention to speak, eliminating the need to click an on-screen button.

Gesture detection works the same as clicking the raise hand button in the Google Meet control bar. Once you raise your hand, a new icon will appear above your camera feed, visible to everyone in the meeting. This short loading icon offers the option to remove the gesture, but you have to be quick, because it disappears after a second or two. When it disappears, the raise hand icon will become visible to other participants, just like when using the control bar button.

To ensure accurate gesture detection, keep your camera on and your hand clearly visible to the camera, away from your face and body. The gesture detection feature will not activate while you are an active speaker; it will resume once you are no longer actively speaking.

Gesture detection is disabled by default, requiring users to enable it manually. To enable the feature during a meeting, follow these steps:

Unfortunately, Google hasn’t yet developed a way to put its hand down. Once your hand is raised, you must manually press the hand raise button to lower it. Gesture detection is currently rolling out to select Google Workspace Business and Education plan users, including:

At the moment, it is unclear whether this feature will be made available to a wider range of users in the future. The Hand Raise Gesture feature is gradually rolling out and it may take a few weeks for some users to see it.