Google Meet can now detect your 'hand raises' in real life. Here’s how to activate the feature.

No need to press the "Raise Hand" button anymore.
 By 
Kimberly Gedeon
 on 
Woman raising her hand during a Google Meet call
Google Meet can now detect whether you're raising your hand in real life. Credit: Google

Google Meet now detects when you raise your hand in real life, so you no longer need to reach for the "hand raise" button to get someone's attention.

This gesture detection is not on by default. You must enable it by going to More Options > Reactions > Hand Raise Gesture.

How to use Google's new hand-raising feature

According to Google's Tuesday blog post, once gesture detection is enabled, you must raise your hand in a specific way to trigger the hand-raise detection:


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  • Your hand must be visible to the camera (of course)

  • Your hand must be held away from your face and body

  • Keep your hand held up until the hand-raise detection circle turns green (see below)

    Google Meet hand-raising feature demo
    Keep your hand raised until the circle that surrounds the icon turns green. Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Keep in mind that admins have no control over this feature, so they won't have the ability to turn it on or off.

This feature will start rolling out today, but only for Google Workspace business, education, and enterprise tiers. Google did not specify whether it plans on bringing this feature to users with personal accounts.

Topics Google

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Kimberly Gedeon
East Coast Tech Editor

Kimberly Gedeon, at Mashable since 2023, is a tech explorer who enjoys doing deep dives into the most popular gadgets, from the latest iPhones to the most immersive VR headsets. She's drawn to strange, avant-garde, bizarre tech, whether it's a 3D laptop, a gaming rig that can transform into a briefcase, or smart glasses that can capture video. Her journalism career kicked off about a decade ago at MadameNoire where she covered tech and business before landing as a tech editor at Laptop Mag in 2020.

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