The global situations associated with COVID-19 has encouraged us to practise social distancing and self-isolation, a once foreign concept but now the most necessary and common one. These practices are also extended to businesses, meaning, most people work remotely from their homes. As such, there is a need to hold meetings in virtual spaces and Zoom is the most popular application for that purpose. 

    This teleconferencing app allows you to participate in meetings virtually from anywhere. If your choice of space for the Zoom virtual meeting is messy, it might be a problem. To help with this problem, you can always use Zoom virtual backgrounds. Read on to know more about this handy feature.

    What Exactly Is ‘Zoom Virtual Background’?

    If you have had photographs taken in studios, you might be familiar with the blue screen behind you which appears as the blue background in your photographs. Zoom virtual backgrounds offer practically the same thing. In these hectic times, most of us work from home where there are kids and pets. We may have a lot in our hands at times and cleaning up the mess may not be the priority.

    Whatever the case might be, when you are participating in virtual meetings, especially those associated with your work, you can’t afford to show your coworkers and bosses an untidy place due to various reasons. That is where the Zoom virtual background feature comes in handy. You can enable virtual background using this feature. This will hide your actual background with a pretty professional background.

    Zoom has a lot of free backgrounds for you to choose from. You can download them very easily. There are a bunch of free backgrounds available that you can download. If you prefer something extra, then you can choose from the many options available to you in ready to purchase form. These backgrounds include coffee shops, home offices, and conference rooms among others. 

    If you need something a bit fancy, you can also choose from some novelty backgrounds like museums, galleries, sceneries, gardens or even beaches. The options are endless. All of these backgrounds can be enabled for group calls as well as individual calls. Thus, your virtual meetings become that much less stressful now that you don’t have to clean up your desk.

    How To Use Zoom Virtual Backgrounds?

    Zoom virtual backgrounds are pretty simple to use. You just have to enable them and they are ready to go. You can always consult their support page in case you run into any trouble. Zoom’s support page recommends using a green screen for the backgrounds to work well. You can easily purchase a green screen online. They are quite cheap.

     But if you don’t have a green screen and do not want to buy one, a well-lit room is also said to do the trick. Make sure your space has uniform lighting. Zoom virtual backgrounds work well on most of the Mac and Windows systems. You will have to download the Zoom desktop client supported by your operating system. After you install that, launch it, find the ‘setup’ option. This option will give you a list of drop-downs, which will also have an option for Zoom virtual backgrounds. It is that simple.

    Final Thoughts

    To align yourself with the needs of the time is the best way to overcome any obstacles that you may face. In these times, virtual meetings are crucial for a firm’s onward journey. Making use of a dedicated application like Zoom will make sure that your meetings run seamlessly.

    Richard is an experienced tech journalist and blogger who is passionate about new and emerging technologies. He provides insightful and engaging content for Connection Cafe and is committed to staying up-to-date on the latest trends and developments.