How to use Google Meet breakout rooms
Breakout rooms are smaller meetings that are created within a meeting. The concept isn’t novel; both Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have support for this feature. It allows a meeting host to move participants in a meeting to smaller rooms.
The breakout rooms are still part of the meeting. They include some of the participants of the meeting and these participants are added/moved by the meeting host. You can create multiple breakout rooms, and each room can have its own name.
Use Google Meet breakout rooms
Google Meet has breakout rooms but they are not one of the features that are available to all users i.e., the feature is not free. You must be subscribed to one of the following Google plans, according to Google;
- Essentials
- Business Standard
- Business Plus
- Enterprise Essentials
- Enterprise Standard
- Enterprise Plus
- Education Plus
- Teaching and Learning Upgrade
- Workspace Business
- Nonprofits
- Workspace Individual Subscriber
If you’re not sure which edition you have, visit this page and it will tell you which account you’re using, and which edition it is.
Use Google Meet breakout rooms
If you want to use Google Meet breakout rooms, you must join the meeting from a computer. The feature is not yet available on the Google Meet mobile apps. You can use the feature if you’ve dialed into a Google Meet meeting.
- Join or create a Google Meet meeting.
- Allow participants to join the meeting.
- Click the Activities button at the bottom right.
- Select Breakout rooms from the list of activities.
- Select how many rooms you want to create (you can create upto 100 rooms).
- Give each room a name.
- Drag and drop participants onto the room you want to move them to.
- Click Create.
- The participants must ‘join’ the rooms that they have been added to.
- A host can join any breakout room they want.
- A participant can leave a breakout room and return to the main meeting whenever they want.
Add people/move people
To move people between rooms after creating them;
- Click Edit room.
- Add/move people between rooms.
- Click Save.
End Breakout rooms
When you’re done with the meeting, you (the Host) can click End Breakout rooms). This will close all the rooms and all participants will be moved to the main meeting
Set up Breakout rooms in advance
You can create breakout rooms before a meeting has started i.e, if you’ve scheduled a meeting.
- Add an event to Google Calendar.
- Add the Google Meet meeting link to event or click Add Google Meet video
- Click the Cog wheel button next to the meeting link.
- Go to the Breakout rooms tab.
- Select the number of rooms you want to create.
- Click Save.
Note: you cannot add participants to breakout rooms until a meeting starts.
Conclusion
Breakout rooms are a great tool but they aren’t part of the free Google Meet offering. You will need to subscribe to one of Google’s workplace or education plans. In some cases, the plan may require that you have a domain available to set up the Google account and that will add to the costs.
