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.
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).
Use ⌘Cmd+Shift+A (PC: Alt+A) to mute/unmute your audio.
To quickly turn video off/on, hit ⌘Cmd+Shift+V (PC: Alt+V).
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.
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.
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”.
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.”
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.
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.”