How to use the whiteboard in Google Meet

You can diagram and illustrate your workflows in a Google Meet meeting with the built-in whiteboard. Follow these simple steps to take advantage of this handy feature.

Google Meet offers its own whiteboard to help you illustrate and envision flowcharts, workflows and other business procedures. With the Google Meet whiteboard, you can draw items with the pen tool, erase items, add sticky notes and images, draw circles and other objects and insert text boxes. You can then save your whiteboard as a PDF or image file, make a copy of it, and share it with other people. Here’s how it works.

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The Google Meet whiteboard is available through the service’s website. Start or join a meeting from the site via a PC browser. In the meeting screen, click the three-dot icon at the bottom and select the option for Whiteboard (Open A Jam) (Figure A).

Figure A

Assuming you haven’t created or saved any previous whiteboards, select the option for Start A New Whiteboard (Figure B).

Figure B

You’re taken to the whiteboard space. First, you may want to set the background. Click the Set Background button and select your preferred background. Click the image button to choose your own customized image to use as the background (Figure C).

Figure C

The toolbar on the left offers a range of features. To draw freehand, click the Pen icon and choose the pen type and color. Use your mouse or finger to draw a line or other object. To draw a straight line, hold down the Enter key as you draw (Figure D).

Figure D

Select the Eraser tool to erase anything you’ve already drawn or inserted into the whiteboard. Click the Sticky Note icon and type the text for a note you wish to include. Click Save (Figure E).

Figure E

Click the icon for Add Image to upload an image from your computer, a web page, your camera, a Google image search, Google Drive or Google Photos. Double-click the image you want to insert (Figure F).

Figure F

Double-click the Circle icon to choose a specific shape, such as a circle, square, triangle, diamond or arrow. Then draw the shape (Figure G).

Figure G

Click the icon for Text box, click in the whiteboard, and then type your desired text (Figure H).

Figure H

Click the icon for Laser to draw a red line on the screen to direct the attention of the participants. Draw on the screen to point to something on the whiteboard. The line quickly disappears as you move your cursor (Figure I).

Figure I

Click the Select arrow and select any object on the screen. You can now resize and tilt the object’s window. Click the three-dot icon for the object to edit its text, duplicate it, delete it or send it forward or behind another object in the same space (Figure J).

Figure J

Next, you can create additional frames. Click the right arrow at the top next to the frame icon. You now have a new frame to populate. Click the arrows to jump back and forth between the different frames (Figure K).

Figure K

Finally, you can decide what to do with the whiteboard when the meeting is over. Click the three-dot icon at the top. From the menu, you can rename the whiteboard, download it as a PDF, save it as a PNG image, remove it or make a copy of it (Figure L).

Figure L