How to Set Up Zoom’s New ‘Immersive View’

It goes without saying that we’re tired of seeing our coworkers’ faces in small boxes on Zoom — and maybe we’re even looking forward to being in the same room again. With Zoom’s new Immersive View feature, you can join other meeting attendees in the same virtual space, like a boardroom, coffee shop, classroom, or (weirdly) an art gallery. So instead of boring square tiles, it’ll look like your coworkers are sitting in a seat or (again, weirdly) hanging in a frame next to you.

Immersive View is enabled by default for Free and Pro accounts, though to actually use it, you must be on an updated version of the desktop app (5.6.3 or higher). Zoom has instructions for enabling the feature in other account types.

Here’s how to use it in your meeting.

How to launch Immersive View

Meeting hosts have control over Immersive View. If you want to enable it for your meeting, click the “View” button in the top-right corner (where you’d switch between gallery view and speaker view).

Select “Immersive View” and choose the automatic option, which includes as many participants as the scene can hold, or the manual option, which lets you add and remove participants yourself.

Then select the scene you want to use. Zoom has different virtual scenes for different meeting sizes, so you can select a background that fits all of your attendees (up to 25 people). The capacity is displayed on each scene tile. Select “Start” to launch Immersive View.

You’ll go back to the View button to change the scene, or end Immersive View by selecting another view option and clicking “Stop.”

How to customise Immersive View

As the host, you can move participants around your virtual scene or add people who come in late. Simply drag and drop, and videos will pop into place. Unassigned participants will appear above the scene. You can also resize participants by clicking on their video and narrowing or expanding the blue frame.

Of course, there are a few limitations to Immersive View. If you have more than 25 participants, only the first 25 will appear in your virtual scene, and the rest will be displayed in the usual thumbnail strip at the top of the screen. Immersive View pauses during screen share and is not available in breakout rooms. Virtual scenes also do not translate to meeting recordings — gallery and/or speaker views will appear instead.

Finally, if you’re on an older version of Zoom or the mobile app, you won’t be able to see Immersive View even if the rest of your coworkers are using it.