Zoom Tips for Beginners

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom usage took off like a rocket. It went from backwater to the forefront within organisations and personal use. It is now ubiquitously used within businesses and is as common as domain names or web hosting.

If you are using Zoom on a computer, getting it to act the way you want can take some effort. Fortunately, Zoom offers keyboard shortcuts and other easy ways to help you get things done. This Zoom Tips for Beginners article shows you several handy ways to make Zoom do what you need with little fuss.

Use keyboard shortcuts

In any Zoom meeting involving multiple participants, you will frequently need to turn your microphone on or off throughout. Zoom allows you to use the space bar as a microphone on/off button to make this easier. The microphone stays turned off by default and turns on only if you hold down the space bar. It springs back to mute when you leave it alone.

This feature gives using Zoom a walkie-talkie quality that makes it more accessible. All you need to do to enable this feature is to go to the Audio tab under Settings on Zoom (click on the gear wheel icon on the upper-right as soon as you sign in) and select the feature named Press and hold space key to temporarily unmute.

Another keyboard shortcut you can enable exists under the Video tab in Settings: the Stop my video when joining a meeting feature. It helps ensure you don’t start broadcasting yourself immediately after entering a meeting. Instead, you get to compose yourself properly and only turn on the camera when you’re good and ready.

In addition, checking the box on the Enable Global Shortcut feature under Settings can help ensure that your keyboard shortcuts for Zoom work even when the Zoom window isn’t in focus.

Zoom offers several other standard keyboard shortcuts, as well. You should be able to find them under Keyboard shortcuts, under Settings. In addition, zoom provides all kinds of ready-made keyboard shortcuts and allows you to assign new key combinations for any existing ones that you find inconvenient.

Keep a record of your Zoom meetings

If you’d like to keep a video recording of a Zoom meeting on file for future reference, a record button is always available at the bottom of your Zoom screen for meetings you host. You can still record, however, if someone else is the host. 

You need to turn this feature on within a web browser. Log into your Zoom account, navigate to Personal settings, and then turn on Automatic recording under the Recording tab. When you do this, all your meetings will be automatically recorded. Of course, you can always turn this feature off if you don’t want to record at any point.

Clean up your Zoom window

When several participants in a meeting show up with their cameras turned off, your Zoom window can seem a dark and faceless place. If you don’t like having several black boxes cluttering your Zoom window, the Video tab under Settings has a Hide non-video participants feature that you can turn on or off.

Let Zoom remind you about scheduled meetings

This is one of the nicest Zoom tips for beginners.

You probably always mark scheduled Zoom meetings in your calendar, but keeping track of a full calendar can take a lot of work. If this is the case, Zoom lets you set up reminders a few minutes before each meeting. You’ll find the Remind me feature in Settings under the General tab. 

Make your meetings more manageable.

When a Zoom meeting has many participants, it is likely that not all need to be in one large group. Instead, you can split them into groups (called a Breakout Room) for parallel discussions. Breakout Rooms can help make meetings manageable by assigning each group to its breakout room. You can learn more about how to set up a breakup room on the Zoom Help Center.

Summary

Using Zoom can be a much smoother experience when you know how to control it. This article has shown you a few of the basics and most valuable zoom tips for beginners. However, look in the Settings area to find other ways of customising the experience.

Where to get Zoom?

If you don’t already have Zoom, then getting it is easy. First, visit the Zoom website and sign-up for a free account. Secondly, download the software from your relevant App Store or the Zoom website. Of course, if you have already signed up, you are all set, so happy Zooming!