How To Use Grid View in Zoom on Android

Zoom came along at a significant time in history. Remote calling and communicating is nothing new, but no app seems to have come on the scene in the same way that Zoom has in 2020. The global crisis made it necessary to leave face-to-face contact behind us and practice extreme social distancing. Suddenly, we were experiencing extreme social media in real time in our most important activities in our lives. We no longer left real-time interaction for checking in. We needed conferencing apps to bring us together for education and work. Zoom is one of those applications and it fit the bill for our desperate times.

The app is quite versatile and powerful. Here is a short tutorial for when we want to see all of the participants in a Zoom meeting in grid view. As our meetings grew in number, we had a desire to see as many participants as we could see. Grid view is the way that we see the participants during a Zoom meeting.

You will first have to obtain the Zoom app from the Android store. The download is free. Also, you will need an account if you are not being invited to a Zoom meeting. Those invited to a meeting do not need to sign in to the Zoom app to participate.

There are a few options for viewing your meeting and the participants. By default, the meeting usually begins with the speaker view. This is where the person speaking is featured at the center of your screen. This is accompanied by a yellow outline that affirms who is talking. There is another view where the speaker can be featured and you have three or four participants on the right side of the screen. However, we want to see as many participants as we can see, during out meeting.

Grid View 

Grid View has a few options. You will have to specify if you want to see 49 participants in grid view. If you are seeing this many people at one time, the app will highlight the border of the participants with a yellow frame. Also, some people will take advantage of the option to hide their faces. You can attend the meeting without showing your face, or you can show an image. If the attendee turns their video feed off, their place in the view is placed after the participants who are streaming their images.

Grid view is accomplished by selecting ‘Gallery View’ in the top-right corner of your Zoom app. This will give you the default grid view on your device. To get your device to display up to 49 participants, you will have to select the up arrow on the video button at the bottom-right of the screen. Then click the ‘Video Settings’ option at the bottom of the dialog box. This will open a dialog with options to customize the app to your specifications. If your device supports displaying 49 participants in grid view, you will be allowed to select that option at the bottom of the ‘Video Settings’ screen. However, seeing 49 participants requires a lot of bandwidth. Seeing that many on your device requires you to have top notch equipment. As you get acquainted with the app, you will want to adjust your personal background, and customize some other options.

Note that grid view tends to require more bandwidth. This means that you may be prone to experience freezing and hesitation. This can be from incoming video and your outgoing video. There are a lot of considerations for the reliability of your internet connection as well.

Beware of being dropped from a meeting, when bandwidth issues arise. The good news is that Zoom is pretty reliable towards the people that attend a meeting. Users say that they are automatically reconnected to the meeting, if they are dropped from the meeting.