You can use Google Meet with CarPlay now: How to join meetings safely in your car

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Google has introduced support for Meet to Apple CarPlay.
• Features are limited, and there's no video, only audio.
• Support for Android Auto is coming “soon.”

If you use Google Meet for work, you'll soon be able to easily join your meetings on the road — at least if you're in the Apple ecosystem.

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Google has announced that support for Meet is officially here for Apple CarPlay, letting you join a meeting straight from your car's dashboard. You can already hear Meet audio through your car if you open the app through your connected phone, but accessing it this way is significantly easier and a lot less distracting.

What can Meet do in CarPlay?

You can join meetings while you're on the go, Google explains, and see your upcoming meeting schedule. This version of Meet is limited, though. You will have controls to mute or unmute, but many other features, like Hand Raise, Chat, or Polls, won't be available.

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When you join a Meet call through your car, your camera will be off, and you won't see any video content on your dashboard. Calls will be audio only to make sure you stay focused on driving, and you won't be able to create a new meeting from your car, only join an existing one. Also, if you're the host of a meeting, you can't accept or reject any participants from your car.

This feature will be on by default if you have Google Meet on your iPhone. To get started, connect to a CarPlay-compatible vehicle.

How to join a Meet from your car

To join a meeting from your car, you will need Meet on your phone. From there: 

1. Connect your phone to your vehicle via Bluetooth or USB.
2. Tap the Meet app on your Apple CarPlay display.
3. The interface will show your schedule meetings. Select a meeting to join.

If there's a waiting room, you'll see a status message on your screen. 

Your audio will switch automatically to play from your phone or earbuds to the car's speakers, but when you disconnect your phone from CarPlay, your audio will returns to the previously used output device.

Also: It turns out, FaceTime on an Android phone is not as complicated as you may think

While in a meeting, you can use the controls on your car's display to mute/unmute or end the call.

Android Auto support coming ‘soon'

It's not necessarily a huge surprise that you can use Meet through CarPlay, but it is surprising that Google prioritized Apple over its own platform. Support for Android Auto is coming “soon,” Google added, but it didn't add a timeframe.