Google Meet is rolling out a long-requested upgrade that makes screen sharing far less clumsy. A new Open in new window option lets you undock the content someone is presenting and move it into its own resizable window, so you can keep faces, chat, and controls visible without juggling tabs or losing context.
What the New Shared Media Window in Meet Does
When a participant shares a screen, tab, or app, you’ll now see the Open in new window control. Click it and Meet pulls the shared media out of the main meeting view into a standalone window. You can drag it to a second monitor, snap it next to your notes, resize it for detail work, or redock it when you want everything back in one place. The meeting grid, chat, reactions, and controls remain available, reducing the “either presentations or people” trade-off that has dogged many video calls.
The feature works with the core sharing modes users rely on most: entire screen, specific window, or browser tab. It’s purpose-built for the way teams actually work—jumping between content, tracking reactions, and managing tasks in parallel—without forcing you to constantly reconfigure layouts mid-meeting.
Why It Matters For Remote And Hybrid Work
Pop-out content sounds small, but it targets a real pain point. In high-stakes reviews or client demos, presenters need to read the room while keeping a close eye on the material. With the shared media in its own window, you can park the deck or prototype on one display and keep participant tiles, chat, and speaker notes on the other. Fewer layout clicks mean fewer missed cues and smoother handoffs.
Consider a design critique where the presenter shares Figma. Previously, you either gave the design your full screen or shrank it to keep faces in view. Now, you can keep the design large on one side and still catch a raised hand or a quick emoji that signals confusion. Educators and trainers get similar wins: pin the lesson content while monitoring the class, questions, and attendance. Support engineers can keep logs and runbooks in view while tracking a customer’s reactions during a troubleshooting session.
Analyst firms have long flagged the productivity cost of context switching in meetings, and this is squarely aimed at that tax. By reducing the constant resizing and tab shuffling, Meet lowers the cognitive load so teams can focus on decisions instead of window management.
Availability Across Google Accounts and Workspace Editions
Google says Open in new window is coming to all Google Workspace editions, Workspace Individual subscribers, and personal Google accounts. The rollout is gradual, so the option may appear at different times for different users. Once it lands, there’s nothing to configure—look for the control when someone presents, or when you are viewing shared content in a meeting.
This addition follows Google’s recent push to make Meet more flexible and inclusive. Features like picture-in-picture and adaptive layouts reduced friction for viewers, while enhancements such as speech translation on mobile broaden accessibility. The new shared media window extends that philosophy by letting attendees arrange meetings around their own workflows rather than the other way around.
How It Compares to Rivals like Zoom and Teams
Competitors have offered multi-window experiences for a while. Zoom lets users float video panels and manage shared content in separate panes, and Microsoft Teams supports popping out meetings and chats so you can spread work across displays. Meet has chipped away at this gap incrementally, and the dedicated shared media window brings it much closer to parity for day-to-day collaboration.
Where Meet’s approach stands out is its simplicity: one clear control, consistent behavior across share types, and easy redocking. For organizations standardizing on Google Workspace, that’s enough to eliminate a common headache without retraining or new admin policies.
A Small Tweak With Big Payoff for Everyday Meetings
Not every productivity gain requires AI or a wholesale redesign. Sometimes, it’s about giving users control over how content and people coexist on screen. Open in new window is one of those pragmatic upgrades—quietly powerful, widely useful, and long overdue.
If you rely on Meet for client calls, classrooms, or distributed standups, this feature should quickly become part of your muscle memory. Drag the share where you want it, keep the conversation in view, and stop wrestling with layouts. The goal of video conferencing is to make collaboration feel natural; this change gets Meet a meaningful step closer.
