For the best experience, and to scale attendance for large meetings, enable all participants as viewers. When you enable view-only roles, you also get the option to designate some attendees as contributors.
Viewers can:
Find out which Google Workspace editions have the view-only role
- Observe the meeting
- Raise their hand
- Participate in activities, such as Q&A and polls
- Use reactions
Tips:
- When you are in a view-only role, at the bottom, next to the meeting name, 'View only' is displayed.
- If there are any participants in the meeting that are in view-only roles, then all reactions sent by any participant are anonymous.
Viewers can't:
- Share audio or video
- Share their screen
- Chat
You can pre-set meeting attendees as viewers in the following Workspace editions:
- Google Workspace Business Standard
- Business Plus
- Enterprise Standard
- Enterprise Essentials
- Education Fundamentals
- Education Standard
- Teaching & Learning Upgrade
- Education Plus
- Enterprise Essentials Plus
- Enterprise Plus
Tip: In Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus and Education Plus, after 500 contributors join, the next 500 automatically join in viewer mode.
Turn on Everyone is a viewer
- On your computer, open Google Calendar.
- Create a new meeting and add guests.
- In the Google Calendar meeting invitation, open Host controls
.
- Turn on Host management.
- In the 'Guests' tab, turn on Everyone is a viewer by default.
- Optional: Add contributors.
- To add contributors, add guests to the invitation.
- Tip: If their email doesn't display, make sure that they're first added to the invitation.
Change a participant from viewer to contributor
Important: A host can move a viewer into a contributor and back to a viewer while on the web version or when using Picture-in-picture mode on the computer.
In a view-only role, when a viewer raises their hand, the host or co-host can make the viewer a contributor.
As a host or co-host:
- In the meeting, at the bottom right, select People
.
- Select the viewer
Make a contributor
.
.
Make a contributor