Google Meet, which used to be a part of G Suite (now, Workspace) services, opened up to everyone last year due to the circumstances that the pandemic ushered in. Since then, it has become one of the most used video conferencing apps across the world.

But Google Meet didn’t just enjoy said popularity among people looking to connect for work. It’s also become quite a favorite for folks seeking personal connections. One of the reasons Meet is so popular with everyone is the ease of usage. In fact, Meet has become so popular that it might soon entirely replace another video conferencing service from Google – Duo – according to some reports and speculations.

Meet is not only available for use on the desktop, it’s available on both iOS and Android as well. So, if you’re currently a user of Duo, it might be a good time to look into Meet. Even if you aren’t, Meet is as good an app as any for your video conferencing needs. Here’s everything you need to know about using Google Meet on your iPhone.

Getting Started with Google Meet

To use Google Meet on your iPhone, you need to download the Meet app from the App Store. You cannot use Google Meet from the browser on your iPhone. But the Meet app isn’t the only place you can use the meeting experience from Google on your iPhone.

Google Meet also enjoys a certain integration within Gmail, that’s also available on the iPhone app. To use Google Meet from Gmail, you’d need the Gmail app as the integration isn’t available in the mobile version of gmail.com.

Whether you use it from the Gmail app or the dedicated Meet app, the experience will remain the same. Google Meet works with both a personal Google account or a Workspace account. Granted, few features are only available with a Workspace account, but the rest of them are available for use for everyone.

Download the Google Meet app from the App Store.

Then, log in with your account (Google or Workspace). Tap the ‘Sign in’ button when you open the app.

A login prompt will appear. Tap the ‘Continue’ button.

The app will redirect you to accounts.google.com. Enter your Google email address and password to sign in.

Now that you’re signed in, you can start and join meetings from Google Meet in a matter of seconds.

To use ‘Meet’ from the Gmail app, tap the ‘Meet’ tab from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Since you are already logged in to your Google account on the Gmail app, you can start or join meetings right away and the process is the same as the dedicated Meet app.

Starting a Meeting on Google Meet from your iPhone

You can start your own meeting on Google Meet or join someone else’s meeting. When you start your own meeting, you become the meeting organizer. You can start instant meetings or schedule meetings for a set time.

Starting an Instant Meeting

To start a meeting, open the app and tap the ‘New Meeting’ button.

A menu with few options will appear. Tap the ‘Start an Instant Meeting’ option.

The meeting will start instantly without any preview screens. You can invite other people to the meeting by either sharing the meeting link or meet code.

The meeting link will be available on your screen. Tap the ‘Copy’ icon to copy the link and send it manually through any other platform – email, iMessage, Whatsapp, etc.

You can also tap the ‘Share invite’ icon to share the link.

A menu displaying your most recent and other available sharing mediums will appear. Tap the option you want to use and send the link to invite others to the meeting.

At any point in the meeting, your meeting code will be displayed at the top of the screen at all times. The Meeting code is the assortment of the same letters that appear after the / in the meeting link. You can also share this code and other people can use it to join your meeting.

Tip: If you’re manually typing the code to someone instead of copying it, you don’t need to include the - between different segments of the code.

When someone tries to join the meeting, you’d get a prompt on the screen with their name and profile picture. Tap ‘Admit’ to allow them to join the call. Tap ‘Deny’ if you aren’t sure who the user might be. As the meeting organizer, any participants have to be allowed into the call by you for security reasons, whether they’re from inside your organization (for Workspace users) or outside. For private Google accounts, every user is from outside the organization as there is no organization.

Scheduling a Meeting

You can also schedule a meeting on Google Meet through Google Calendar. Scheduling a meeting allows other meeting participants to be prepared for the event in advance. It’s the best course of action for formal meetings.

Tap ‘New Meeting’ from the app and then, select ‘Schedule in Google Calendar’ from the menu.

If you don’t have the app, you can get the app or open the Google Calendar in your default browser. Select the corresponding option from the screen.

If you have the app, the Google Calendar app will open by default. A new event will be created. Add the title for the event and complete other details like the meeting date, time, and duration.

Tap the ‘More options’ option to reveal hidden options.

From these options, you can change the timezone and make the meeting recurring. The meeting would be non-recurring by default. Tap ‘Does Not Repeat’ to change it.

Then, you can select one of the pre-defined recurrences or create a custom recurrence.

Then, tap ‘Add People’ to add the meeting participants. These people will be sent a meeting invite as soon as you create the event.

You can also choose whether or not guests can add others to the event. By default, guests can invite others. To disable the setting, turn off the toggle for ‘Guests can add others’. Tap ‘Done’ after adding everyone to return to the event details.

When you add people to an event, if their calendar is available, you can also use it to see if they are free during the time you’re setting. Google can also help you find a suitable time according to everyone’s calendar. As soon as you tap ‘Done’, an option for ‘View Schedules’ will appear underneath the added guests. Tap it and Google will help you compare calendars for free time.

You can also add a meeting description, attachments, to your calendar event. To change the privacy of the calendar, tap ‘Calendar default’.

Calendar default means that your event (the meeting) will have the same privacy settings as your calendar. So, any users who have access to your calendar will be able to see the event details.

There are two other options: ‘Private’ and ‘Public’. Making an event private will mean that only attendees can see the event details, i.e., any users who have access to your calendar otherwise won’t be able to see this event. Making an event public will make it visible to anyone your calendar is shared with.

Tap ‘Save’ to create the event.

The event will appear in your Meet app under ‘Meetings’ and the guests will receive invitations for the event with the meeting link. Guests can also RSVP to the event. You’ll get an email when they respond to the invite. You can also see their response in the meeting details when you tap the event from the Meet app.

To join the meeting, tap the event from the Google Meet app.

Then, tap the ‘Join’ button. Even the participants you have invited to the meeting will have to be admitted by you.

Generate a Meeting Link

For more informal meetings, like a movie night with friends, you have another option instead of scheduling the meeting. For such situations, all you need is a meeting link so everyone can be prepared on time. There’s rarely any need for a calendar event for a rendevous with friends. You can generate a meeting link and share it with them beforehand so they can be ready when it’s time to meet.

Tap ‘New Meeting’ and select ‘Get a Meeting link to share’.

The meeting link will appear on your screen. Either tap the ‘Copy link’ option or tap the ‘Share invite’ option to share directly from the options that appear. Just make sure to save this link somewhere for yourself, as well, as Google Meet won’t retain this link for you.

Joining a Meeting on Google Meet from your iPhone

You can also join any meetings from your iPhone on the go. When someone shares the meeting information with you, there are two ways you can join a meeting on your phone.

If you have received the meeting link, tap it and the Google Meet app will open on its own and the meeting joining screen will appear.

You can also join the meeting using the meeting code whether you’ve received the link or the code itself. Open the Google Meet app and tap the ‘Join with a code’ button.

Then, enter the meeting code; you don’t have to enter the - (dash) in the code. The Meeting code is 10 letters long and if they’ve shared a link with you, the letters after the / (forward slash) are the code.

The preview screen will open. Tap the ‘Join’ button to ask to join the meeting.

Once the meeting organizer lets you in, you’ll be a part of the meeting.

Navigating the Meeting Interface

The meeting interface for Google Meet on iPhone is slightly different than the web app if you have ever used it.

Your self-view window appears in the bottom-left corner of the screen. You can drag it anywhere but you can’t close the window.

The only view available in the iOS app is the grid view that shows the videos for up to 8 participants. Videos adjust automatically according to the number of participants in the meeting. The grid view only changes when you pin someone’s video, but there’s no spotlight view like the desktop where the video of the person currently speaking is front and center.

At the top, there are controls for the camera and speaker that are exclusive to the phone app. Tap the ‘camera’ icon to switch to the back camera. Tap it again to switch back. The ‘speaker’ icon lets you switch between the speaker and the receiver on your phone.

The rest of the meeting controls are on the meeting toolbar at the bottom. Tap the video camera and microphone icon to enable/ disable the camera and microphone.

Sharing your Screen

Tap the ‘More’ icon (three-dot menu) to access further controls like screen-sharing, meeting chat, captions, and more.

Tap ‘Share screen’ to share your screen with the meeting participants.

Then, tap ‘Start Broadcast’. A 3-second countdown will begin after which the contents of your screen will be visible to everyone. Unlike the web app, you cannot share specific apps or browser tabs from your phone. Complete contents of your screen will be broadcasted.

Tap the ‘Stop Sharing’ option from the Google Meet app to stop the broadcast.

Or, you can also tap the red oval in the left notch of the screen to stop the screen-sharing session. A confirmation prompt will appear. Tap ‘Stop’ from the options available.

Meeting Chat

The meeting chat is a great place to communicate without interrupting the speaker. But the messages shared in the chat are only available during the meeting and not after.

Tap ‘More’ and then ‘In-call messages’ to open the chat panel.

If someone else sends a message in the chat, the message will appear momentarily on the meeting screen. You can also tap it to open the chat panel.

The chat panel will open. The messages that were sent before you joined the meeting are not visible to you.

Managing People in the Meeting

To view the roster of the people, tap the meet code at the top of the screen. The ‘People’ panel will open. All participants can pin the video of other participants from the people panel.

To pin someone’s video, tap the ‘three-dot menu’ next to their name in the People panel.

Then, select ‘Pin’ from the options. Pinning someone’s video from the participant panel is the best option when there are more than 8 participants in the meeting and their video is not a part of the grid.

If the person’s video is in the grid, tap and hold their video tile. Then, select ‘Pin’ from the options.

When a participant’s video is pinned, the videos of other participants appear in tiles at the bottom of the screen alongside your own video. Tap the ‘Full screen’ icon and their videos will disappear from the screen.

To return to the grid view, tap the ‘Pin’ icon on the pinned video tile.

The meeting organizer has additional controls for managing other participants like muting them or removing them from the meeting.

To mute a participant, tap the blue dots/ line next to a participant’s name that indicates that they’re currently speaking.

A confirmation prompt will appear. Tap ‘Mute’ to confirm. For security reasons, you can only mute someone, not unmute them. Only the participant can unmute themselves.

To remove a participant from the meeting, tap the ‘three-dot menu’ next to the participant’s name. Then, tap ‘Remove’ from the options that appear.

A confirmation prompt will appear on the screen. Tap ‘Remove’ and the person will be removed from the meeting.

Using Background Blur, Replace, and Filters

Google Meet iOS app also has the feature to blur or replace your background, or use filters and AR masks on your video stream.

Go to your self-view window and tap the ‘Effects ✨’ icon.

The Effects screen will open. Swipe left and right to select from one of the following categories: Blur, Backgrounds, Styles, and Filters. Tap the effect you want to use and everyone in the meeting will see your video with the applied effect.

Mosey over here for a deeper dive into the feature.

Other Features

The iOS app for Google Meet also offers some other features that come in handy in a meeting.

For people who have a hearing disability, are in a noisy area, or are having difficulty understanding the language or accent, you can use captions in the meeting. Captions are auto-generated and work with these spoken languages: English, French, German, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Mexico), and Spanish (Spain).

Select one of the languages from above that people will be speaking in the meeting and the captions will be displayed in that language.

To enable captions, go to ‘More’ from the meeting toolbar and select ‘Show captions’ from the options.

To change the language, go to ‘Settings’ from the same options.

Select ‘Language’ from the settings.

Then, tap the language you wish to change to.

The Google Meet iOS app also has the option for low-light adjustment. The option should be on by default, but you can enable/ disable it from settings. Tap ‘Settings’ from the More options menu. Turn on the toggle for ‘Adjust video for low light’ to enable the setting.

There you go! That’s everything you need to know about using Google Meet on iPhone. Google Meet runs exactly the same on iPad as well. Now, you can use Google Meet on the go from your iOS device.