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Zoom on Tuesday announced new features to support casual meetings that will allow users to add filters and react with emojis a la Snapchat style.
People using the videoconferencing app will now have an option to put on a moustache, grow unicorn horns, or wear a pirate eye patch to look funny and share lighter moments with colleagues and friends.
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The new feature will allow users to select from a list of eight different video filters, and several virtual backgrounds. They can also set colour filters to turn their video into a black-and-white photo, or apply other colours to fill their screen.
Zoom users can also use emojis to react to a particular moment in the meeting by selecting from a list of six emojis under the ‘reactions’ option.
“The casual and fun elements that bring us together in the office seem to be missing from virtual meeting culture … until now,” Zoom said in a statement.
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Zoom has also enhanced few other features on its app. It will now allow users to adjust lighting on their screen and enable skin smoothing.
To effect these brightness changes, users have to toggle ‘touch up my appearance’ under the video settings option, and then slide to right or left.
Zoom is also making some changes to its audio settings. The company has introduced a feature to reduce background noise. People can change their audio preference between low to high noise suppression to give them distraction-free audio for important meetings and presentations.
The latest features can be accessed by upgrading to Zoom 5.2. Users who do not want these updates can disable meetings filters at the account, group, and user levels in the Zoom web portal.