Be it an official team meeting or a family/friends reunion, Zoom offers a lot of flexibility to cater to the needs of different types of people. For instance, it offers three video layouts namely Active Speaker, Gallery and Mini. Gallery view is ideal for a meeting with a large number of participants (like a family reunion) whereas Active Speaker view is perfect for a team meeting. Lastly, the mini view comes in handy whenever you need to do other tasks on your computer while attending a meeting on Zoom.

Furthermore, Zoom allows users to customize the video layouts based on the need. Like, you can pin the video only to a particular speaker instead of the active speaker.

What does Pin Video Mean on Zoom

Whenever you are in a Zoom meeting, it will display the Active Speaker view (default), in which the larger video window always belongs to the person who is currently speaking. However, by using the Pin Video option, you can configure the larger window to display only a specific person instead of the active speaker.

Pinning a person’s video will only affect your local view, but not the view for other participants in the meeting.

How to Pin a Video from Zoom Desktop App

Open Zoom Desktop app on your computer and make you’re logged into your account. Then, start a new meeting or join an ongoing one.

Then, on the Zoom meeting screen, hover your mouse over the video of the participant you wish to pin and click on the ‘three-dot’ icon that appears on the top right of the video thumbnail.

Select ‘Pin Video’ from the list of options that appear in the menu.

Once you’ve pinned a video, the main video feed on your meeting screen will be of the person you pinned. And, it won’t be switched to Active Speaker view, until you ‘Unpin’ the pinned person.

How to Pin a Video from Zoom Mobile App

In order to use Pin Video option on Zoom mobile app, you need to switch to Gallery view. To do that, first, launch Zoom app on your phone and make sure you are logged in.

Once you start or join a meeting, your video layout will be in Active Speaker view. After one or more participants have joined the meeting, you will see a video thumbnail at the bottom right of your screen.

Swipe left on the video thumbnail to switch to Gallery view from Active Speaker view. In the gallery view, you can view up to a maximum of 4 participant’s video at the same time. If you need to view more participants video, then keep swiping left.

To pin someone in Zoom mobile app, double-tap on the video of the participant you wish to pin while you’re in Gallery View.

Now, you will see only the video of the pinned participant on your Zoom meeting screen.

Next time you’re in a large Zoom meeting and you only want to see the video feed of the main speaker in the meeting, then be sure to make use of Zoom’s ‘Pin Video’ feature. It’s also useful for students attending online classes/lectures on Zoom, they can pin the lecturer’s video feed to only see them on meeting screen.