How can I show a video to my students over Google Meet?

For the best picture and sound quality, post a link to the video in the chat window of Google Meet and ask your students to click the link, view the video, and return to the Google Meet afterwards.

However, if your students watch a video and you want to show clips from that video during lecture, you can take advantage of a feature Google recently added to Meet that allows you to share a video with your students.  You can use this feature for longer videos, but the quality of the video may be degraded by the students' internet connections.

You'll need to be running Chrome in order to take advantage of this:
  1. Open your video (without playing it yet) in a separate tab.  You might want to do this before the meeting begins, just to have it ready.
  2. When you're ready to play the video, mute your microphone.  The audio from the video will come directly from the tab, and any sound from your mic will make the audio from the video cut out.  (Obviously, feel free to unmute if you need to make commentary on the video and you don't mind preempting its audio.)
  3. In Google Meet, click Present now and choose A Chrome tab from the menu.
  4. Choose the tab with the video, make sure Share audio is checked, and click the blue Share button.
  5. Switch to the tab with the video.  You'll see a message saying that you're sharing it in Google Meet.
  6. Play your video.  If you click the "full screen" option, it will take up the entire tab and make the video easier for your students to see.