Zoom announces a new “Focus” mode for students

Zoom announced updates to its popular video conferencing platform this week. The app is now rolling out a new “Focus” mode designed primarily to prevent students from being distracted during online lessons.

While online courses have become more than needed around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, audio and video calling apps are constantly adding new features and improving their services for a better experience. Now, Zoom offers a Focus mode, which can be used by anyone but which is perfect for teachers.

The company first revealed the feature in a blog post (via The edge) earlier today. Once the host activates Focus mode, other participants will no longer be able to see each other during the call. The host will still have access to the webcams of all participants, but other people will not be distracted by the live videos of their peers.

Focus mode allows teachers to view their students’ videos and students to view their teachers without seeing other class participants. With this feature, teachers can supervise their class, but students won’t be distracted by peer video feeds or feel embarrassed to turn on their own camera.

Depending on Zoom, the feature can be enabled for accounts, groups, or even individual users. Focus mode is accessible via the More button that appears during a call.

Focus mode in iOS 15

iOS 15 also comes with a new feature called Focus Mode. However, it works differently from the new option added to Zoom.

With Focus Mode on iOS, users can create focus profiles for different activities like sleeping, working or studying. Each profile can have different apps and allowed contacts, so any others not included in the list will not notify you when this mode is enabled. Users can also hide apps from the Home screen when Focus mode is on, and even schedule a profile for a specific time or location.

iOS 15 is expected to be available to all users this fall.

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