Google Meet has finally caught up with Zoom in the one big way that matters: custom backgrounds. Now, instead of being able to just reduce background noise and / or blur your background, you can now replace it entirely with any image you want. Phew, that took enough time, huh?

Users will be able to choose from the variety of images from Google or upload your own to Meet via Chrome OS and Chrome on Windows and macOS starting today for Google Workspaces on Rapid Release domains and from 6 November for scheduled launch domains. Education users who start a meeting room will not be able to take advantage of this feature.

You’ll know when you get the custom backgrounds when you see this new icon during a Meet Call and on the preview page. Tap it, then select whether you want a light blur effect, a stronger blur, a pre-loaded background, or your own downloaded background. Later this year, if you’re in a G Suite organization, your admin can choose to control who can use custom and predefined backgrounds.

Meet’s mobile apps will get the feature in a later update, so it will continue to catch up with Zoom’s Android app.

You can read more about how Google designed its background filter for performance and efficiency by checking out this blog post from the AI ​​team.