Use waiting rooms in Google Meet

When you host a meeting in Google Meet, you can create a virtual space where participants wait until you allow them into the meeting. A waiting room helps you control who enters and leaves your meeting, and when. It helps protect the privacy of participants if you need to meet them separately, especially for sensitive discussions.

Participants can check the basic meeting details and calendar attachments from the waiting room.

Create a waiting room for your meeting

When you create a meeting in Google Calendar, you can choose to include a waiting room.

1. On your computer, go to Calendar .
2. At the top left, click Create Event.
3. Add a title to the event, and any event details.
   • At the bottom, click More options.
4. In the “Event details” tab, click Add Google Meet video conferencing Video call options .
5. In the “Waiting room” tab, under “Waiting room,” turn on Waiting room.
   • If you want to bring people into the call from the waiting room as soon as you join the meeting, turn on Bring in automatically.
   • If a co-host joins the call, the meeting automatically starts and everyone is moved into it.
6. At the bottom, click Save Save.

Manage participants in the waiting room

As a host, you can:

• Control the waiting room settings of your meeting in Calendar.
• Automatically admit participants upon arrival.
  • If a co-host joins the call, the meeting automatically starts and everyone is moved into it.
• Manually admit participants one by one.
• Check the queue of participants in the waiting room.
  • Participants are held in queue outside the main meeting even if they’re on the meeting invite.
• Send one-way chat messages from the main room to participants in the waiting room.

Check who’s in the waiting room

1. On your computer, join the meeting.
2. At the bottom, click People .
3. In the “People” panel on the right, under “In the waiting room,” you can find who’s in the queue.

Move participants between the waiting room & main room

1. On your computer, join the meeting.
2. At the bottom, click People .
3. To bring everyone in the waiting room into the main room, under “In the waiting room,” click Bring everyone in.
   • Or, if you want to bring a specific participant into the main room, next to their name, click Bring in.
4. To move someone from the main room to the waiting room, under “In the meeting,” next to their name, click More actions Send to the waiting room.

Send messages to participants in the waiting room

1. Join a Meet video meeting.
2. At the bottom, click Chat .
3. At the bottom, in the “To” field, select Waiting room.
4. Enter your message.
5. Click Send .

Tip: Participants in the waiting room can’t reply to your messages.