Meeting hosts can use breakout rooms to divide participants into smaller groups during meetings. Breakout rooms must be started by meeting hosts during a meeting on a computer. Breakout rooms currently can’t be live streamed or recorded.
Anyone who schedules or starts a meeting will be the meeting host. If you transfer or schedule a meeting on someone else's calendar, the other person could become the meeting host. By default, there is only one meeting host per meeting but you can add up to 25 co-hosts once inside the meeting.
Eligibility
Requirements to use breakout rooms
or Gmail app 
.For meeting hosts
You can create breakout rooms for meetings in Google Calendar when creating an event or editing it. You can also create breakout rooms while a meeting is in progress. Co-hosts can only be added from the main meeting.
Tip: If you invite a Google group to a meeting, participants in that group won't automatically be available to distribute into breakout rooms. It is recommended to individually invite participants from a group to a meeting in order to easily distribute them into breakout rooms later.
For a new meeting
- Create a new Google Calendar event.
- Click Add Google Meet video conferencing.
- Add participants.
- Click Change conference settings
.
- On the left, click Breakout rooms
.
- Choose the number of breakout rooms, then choose an option:
- Drag participants into different rooms.
- Enter names directly into a room.
- Click Shuffle
to mix the groups.
- Click Save.
.
to mix the groups.For an existing meeting
- Open an existing Google Calendar event.
- Click Edit event
.
- Under Event Details, click Change conference settings
- On the left, click Breakout rooms
- Choose the number of breakout rooms, then choose an option:
- Drag participants into different rooms
- Enter their name directly into a room
- Click Shuffle
- Click Save.
.
Create breakout rooms during a meeting
- On your computer, start a meeting.
- At the bottom right, click Activities
Breakout rooms.
- Tip: To prevent students from having the ability to create breakout rooms, admins should reserve Meet creation privileges for faculty or staff only.
- In the Breakout rooms creation panel, choose the number of breakout rooms. You can create up to 100 breakout rooms in a call.
- Call participants are distributed across the rooms. To manually move people into different rooms, you can:
- Enter the participant’s name directly into a breakout room.
- Drag and drop a participant’s name into another breakout room.
- Click Shuffle
to randomly mix up the groups.
- At the bottom right, click Open rooms.
Breakout rooms.
to randomly mix up the groups.
. At the bottom, click Clear on the “Clear disconnected users” notification that appears.
.Edit, join, or leave breakout rooms
- To make changes to the participant groups or number of breakout rooms, click Edit rooms
. Once you’ve made your changes, click Save.
- Tip: Before moving to a different room, participants must click Join.
- To join an individual breakout room, next to the breakout room number, click Join.
- To leave all breakout rooms and return to the main room, next to the current breakout room, click Leave.
. Once you’ve made your changes, click Save.
End breakout rooms
- In the breakout rooms panel, at the top right, click Close rooms
- In the notification window that appears, click Close all rooms.
Important: Participants have 30 seconds to finish their breakout room discussion before they’re automatically moved back to the main room.
To close all rooms before the 30-second timer runs out, go to the breakout rooms panel and click Close rooms .
For meeting participants
Join a breakout room
Your meeting host will create breakout rooms and invite you to join one. Your meeting host can join each breakout room at any time during the meeting.
- On a computer or mobile device, sign in to your Google Account.
- Join a meeting from your computer or the Meet mobile app. Learn the different ways to join a meeting if you're a student.
- When your meeting host invites you to join a breakout room, you'll see a prompt on your screen. Click Join. If you click cancel, you'll remain in the main room.
- Tip: If you dialed in through your phone, tap *2 to go to your breakout room, move between breakout rooms, or return to the main room.
- Once you're in a breakout room, you can speak to or send chat messages to other participants.
Tips for using breakout rooms
Return to the main room
During a meeting, you can choose to leave a breakout room and return to the meeting's main room.
- On a computer: At the top, click Return to main call.
- On a mobile device: At the top, tap to Return to main call.
When the meeting host ends the breakout room session, you get an on-screen prompt to return to the main call. You can tap or click the prompt or wait to be moved automatically to the main call.