As a 100% remote company, we rely on Zoom to communicate with our global team. Today, we’re sharing our favorite Zoom tips and tricks to help newly-remote teams get up to speed on video conferencing.
We build customer support software here at Groove.
We provide an inbox for customer service email collaboration, a knowledge base for self-service and training guides, and a reporting dashboard to help our customers scale appropriately.
And we do it all as an entirely remote team.
While, we don’t have our meetings in a physical conference room, we do see each other every single day.
Our daily video meeting rhythm helps us to stay productive, happy and close-knit.
Each day, we huddle together via video chat, and the best tool that we’ve found for this so far is Zoom.
We spend hundreds of hours per year in Zoom. So time-saving hacks, even if they just save a few seconds, can make a meaningful difference in our productivity.
Even if you just use Zoom for the occasional meeting, the tips and tricks we’ve fallen in love with can still help you have a smoother, more pleasant experience.
Today, I’m sharing our favorite Zoom hacks, including keyboard shortcuts, non-obvious settings, integrations, and general video chat tips.
You’ll learn:
- How we save hours each year with shortcuts (e.g., invite someone to a meeting in less than 2 seconds)
- Little-known integrations that can make scheduling meetings seamless
- How to actually look better in your video meetings
- And more…
Zoom Keyboard Shortcuts
Use these shortcuts to save time on common tasks in Zoom.
1) Quick Invite
When you’re in a meeting, type ⌘Cmd+I (PC: Alt+I) to open the Invite window.
From the Email tab, copy the URL, and send it to anyone who you want to invite to the meeting.
Or click on Contacts to directly invite a colleague if they’re on your contact list.
Note: See Tip #10 for an even faster way to invite others
2) Record Meeting
Recording is a tremendously useful feature in Zoom.
Want to save key meetings or employee one-on-one’s? Record them for reference.
Doing an interview and don’t want to slow things down by taking notes? Record it and get it transcribed. We do this for all of our founder interviews.
Just type ⌘Cmd+Shift+R (PC: Alt+R) to start recording any meeting.
Type ⌘Cmd+Shift+P (PC: Alt+P) to pause/resume recording.
3) Share Screen
Screen sharing is one of the key features that Zoom does better than any other video conferencing platform we tried.
To start a screen share, type ⌘Cmd+Shift+S (PC: Alt+Shift+S).
To pause/resume a screen share, type ⌘Cmd+Shift+T (PC: Alt+T).
4) Mute Audio
Use ⌘Cmd+Shift+A (PC: Alt+A) to mute/unmute your audio.
5) Turn Off Video
To quickly turn video off/on, hit ⌘Cmd+Shift+V (PC: Alt+V).
6) Mute Everyone
Our daily huddles now involve 20 people.
Ambient or background noise can often get in the way of clear communication.
We found this trick where the meeting host can hit ⌘Cmd+Ctrl+M (PC: Alt+M) to mute everyone on the call at once.
This shortcut has single-handedly shaved minutes off of our daily meetings.
Zoom Settings
If you fix these settings once, they’ll reward you with optimized Zoom meetings forever…
7) Always Mute Microphone
This setting ensures you enter meetings quietly without bringing sudden noise to the call.
You can access Audio Settings directly from a Zoom call by clicking the arrow next to the microphone.
Check “Mute microphone when joining a meeting“.
The same setting exists (and as a rule, should always be used) on the mobile app.
8) Always Turn Video Off
Unless video is a necessity, we’ve found that turning it off can help increase the clarity of the call.
This particular setting allows you to turn it off when entering a call (you can always turn it on later)—which is another helpful way to reduce sudden interruptions.
You can access Video Settings directly from a Zoom call by clicking the arrow next to the camera.
Check “Turn off my video when joining a meeting”.
9) Display Names
This is less important when you’re chatting with people you know well, but if you use Zoom to do a lot of sales calls, then this setting will ensure you never accidentally forget the name of the person you’re talking to.
Go to Settings > Video and check “Always display participant’s name on their videos.”
10) Auto-copy Invite URL When Starting a Meeting
The Invite keyboard shortcut is great, but this setting takes things a step further.
Found in General settings, this option makes it super easy to invite people to any meeting, without even going through the process of manually copying the invite URL.
11) Enable Shortcuts Outside of Zoom
This setting will double the power of all of the keyboard shortcuts above, and that’s not an exaggeration.
Do you often have other windows open while in Zoom meetings?
Well, with this setting, you can use your Zoom keyboard shortcuts even when you’re in another window.
To turn it on, go to Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts and select “Enable Global Shortcut.”
12) Meeting Reminder (Mobile)
When I’m on the go, I don’t always know when a meeting is about to start.
On my phone, calendar reminders often go ignored (there are so many of them that it’s just too noisy to keep up). So I set up Zoom reminders to ensure that I never miss an important scheduled meeting.
13) Disable Waiting Room
Zoom recently turned on a bunch of privacy-related settings by default. One of those is the waiting room, which requires you to admit each attendee individually.
Our calls are mostly internal anyway (and it can take a while to admit 10+ people individually), so we turned this setting off under Settings > In Meeting (Advanced) > Waiting room.
(Note: It takes a while to scroll through all the options on this page, so we suggest you CTRL+F “waiting room” to find it quickly.)
14) Touch Up My Appearance
This is more on the spectrum of “fun” than “useful,” but I love that it’s a feature.
In Settings > Video, check “Touch up my appearance,” and Zoom will soften the focus on your camera, theoretically minimizing any issues with your skin.
Zoom Integrations
Zoom works seamlessly with other products you may already use.
15) Slack
We meet in Zoom, but we live in Slack.
Which is why the Zoom/Slack integration is so helpful. You can use it to start Zoom meetings right from Slack. Just type “/zoom” in Slack to see all the options.
We also use Slack’s recurring reminder feature to remind our team when the daily huddle is about to start, both 5 minutes in advance and right as the meeting is starting.
To set this up, just type this into Slackbot:/remind #[roomname] every weekday at 9:55am that Daily Huddle is starting in 5 minutes! [zoom link]
16) Zapier
Zapier connects Zoom with hundreds of other apps, but perhaps the most useful integration of all is scheduling tools.
When you schedule a meeting with someone, whether using Calendly or Google Calendar, rather than following up with that person to send them a Zoom meeting link, or manually updating the calendar invite with the link, you can have Zapier automatically add your Zoom link to the event, making meeting scheduling hands-free.
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How to Apply This to Your Business
We love Zoom, and recommend it to anyone looking for a video meeting tool. I hope these tips help you get as much out of it as we do.
Soon enough, you’ll be able to meet just as easily as you did in person.
Share these tips with everyone in your organization so no one is left in the dark in this new remote world. We can all make the transition a bit easier by sharing what we know!
