Hosting Meetings

Host controls allow you as the host to control various aspects of a Zoom meeting, such as managing the participants.

Once you have started your meeting, the meeting window will open. Many of the icons that you see and the behavior of your meeting are determined by both your account meeting settings and the settings that you enabled when scheduling the individual meeting.

Host Meeting Controls

Green meeting information shield icon: Provides meeting details such as the meeting ID, host name, passcode, and invite link. There is also a small settings gear that when clicked, provides real-time network connection information. If your meeting freezes or drops, you'll want to click on this gear to check the stability of your connection.

View icon: Changes your local view. Options are Speaker, Gallery, Immersive. You can also exit fullscreen through the View options.  Finally, you can start/stop video within the View options.

Host Tools

The meeting control bar has been broken up into two screenshots below with a description of each option.

Mute icon: Mute/unmute yourself. Click on the caret to change certain audio settings such as selecting a microphone, selecting a speaker, as well as testing your speaker and microphone.

Start Video icon: Turn your video camera on or off. Click on the caret to change certain video camera settings including choosing a virtual background.

Security icon: Provides options to lock the meeting, enable a waiting room, hide profile pictures, and disable/enable participants' ability to share screen, chat, rename themselves, mute/unmute themselves, start video, share whiteboards, and suspend participant activities. By selecting to 'Suspend Participant Activities,' everyone will be muted, video, screen sharing, and whiteboard will be stopped, Zoom Apps will be disabled, and the meeting will be locked. You'll also have the option to report the meeting to Zoom's Trust & Safety team.

Participants icon: View list of participants and edit participant functions such as muting all participants and enabling/disabling sound notification when someone joins/leaves meeting. You can also promote participants to co-host role, place participants in the waiting room, and remove participants if being disruptive. 

Chat icon: Chat with participants as well as edit participant chat functions such as limiting who participants can chat with.

Share Screen icon: Select the screen to share from your device. Click on the caret to enable/disable participant screen share.

Polls/Quizzes icon (Mac) or Polls icon (Windows): Create/launch polls and quizzes.

Record: Option to record to the cloud or locally will be available depending on your account recording settings. 

CC icon: Enable manual or auto captions.

Breakout Rooms icon: Create breakout rooms or manage pre-assigned breakout rooms. Pre-assigning is done when originally scheduling the meeting.

Reactions icon: Find an emoji to use to react to what is said/occurring during the meeting.

Support icon: Creates a remote support session that allows you to remotely control and restart a Windows or macOS computer. 

Apps icon: If any apps are approved on your account, they will be listed and accessible when clicking on this icon.

Language Interpretation icon: Allows you to manage language interpreters and sign language interpreters.

More: Start focus mode which gives only the host a view of participant’s shared screen and video (or profile name if participant doesn’t have their video turned on). More also gives you the option to start streaming to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, or a custom live streaming service.

End: Displays the following two options

• End Meeting for All: End the meeting for yourself and all participants. 
• Leave Meeting: Leave the meeting. You will be prompted to assign a host so that the meeting can continue.