- After Apple and Microsoft brought Focus features to their apps, it was now Zoom's turn to come up with one.
- Zoom's new addition is called Focus mode and it helps workers/students complete their work without distractions.
- The feature is aimed at virtual classrooms and the company says that it is going to help teachers to keep their pupils alert.
- During conferences, host and co-host get a view of all the other participant’s videos, without seeing each other.
Focus mode seems to be the newest and most talked about topic in the tech world, at least for the time being.
If you remember, earlier this year, Apple announced a Focus Mode with the iOS 15 update. Apple also said that this feature can be applied to all Apple devices at the same time.
So, obviously, Microsoft recently announced that Focused Sessions would be a part of the new Windows 11 update.
In response to all this, Zoom started rolling out its very own similar feature, called Focus mode.
Zoom has its own Focus mode
Zoom’s focus mode is being aimed at virtual classrooms and the company says that it is going to help teachers in keeping their classroom distractions free.
For this, Zoom’s new feature allows the student to see its teacher’s videos, and vice versa, without actually seeing the other class participants.
So, basically, the host and co-host get a view of all the other participant’s videos, without seeing each other. All the information available on the others attending the meeting is names, feedbacks, and reactions.
You can also use Focus mode while screen sharing, but with a catch. The host and co-host can view and switch between each participant’s screen.
However, during this time, the other participants can only see their own content.
This feature will be enabled for desktop clients, at the time being, for Windows 5.7.3 or higher and macOS 5.7.3 or higher.
Hybrid work sparked a new era of innovation and efficiency
What’s one of the areas where the global pandemic had people scrambling to find immediate solutions? If you were thinking about the work environment, you were right.
Hybrid work, or the work from home, as we all know it, actually started an irreversible process that has driven companies to find solutions that would allow them to remain efficient, or be even more efficient, while at home.
Thousands of implemented methods and security measures later, some of the leading engineers in the world realized that the number one ingredient in keeping a business running remotely is communication.
So, of course, the top conferencing and communication apps, such as Zoom, Teams, or Slack, started receiving countless new additions and upgrades.
So did Skype, even if nobody really talks about it or uses it that much anymore.
So, the keyword when you talk about hybrid work now, is efficiency. Companies like Microsoft understood this immediately and took action towards boosting this important trait.
Even if the COVID-19 situation is not as bad as it was months ago, a lot of enterprises still rely on remote workers.
This automatically means that this is just the beginning of an era that will surely yield some fascinating results, after all the work that’s being put in to create more efficient working environments.
It’s going to be exciting to witness what other ingenious features big companies choose to add to their most popular conferencing applications.
What is your go-to communications app? Let us know in the comments section below.
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