If you’ve been wondering about the difference between Spotlight and Pin Video on Zoom, you’re not alone.
Those two features used to have me stumped, too, until I did some poking and prodding to figure out exactly what those differences are.
Although both features will bring a speaker to the forefront, the differences in how that happens are significant. Hopefully this brief article will help you in your next meeting!
Spotlighting:
Only a Host or Co-host can spotlight someone.
Whoever is spotlighted will appear in Speaker View for everyone, even if participants were viewing the meeting in Gallery View.
No permission is required, either to spotlight or to be spotlighted (spotlit?), so be aware at the next meeting you attend, you could have the virtual spotlight shone on you at any time! (In other words, you might want to wait to pick your nose until your video is off. Just sayin’…)
Pin Video:
Any participant can pin any other participant’s video at any time. No permission is required. (See my caveat above!)
HOW TO PIN VIDEO:
On a computer, click anywhere in the participant’s window.
Then click “Pin Video” in the drop-down menu that appears.
On iPad/iPhone, make sure you’re in Gallery View, then double-tap on the participant you want to pin.
TIP: Pin Video supersedes Spotlight (AND screensharing!)
As a host, be aware that participants always have granular control over what they see in Zoom.
What are some of the most common reasons for using spotlighting vs. pinning?
As a host (or co-host), you may want to spotlight someone who’s speaking so everyone can see them.
Participants may be viewing the meeting in Gallery View, or perhaps they’re in Speaker View, but not everyone is muted, and someone is coughing or moving their chair, so their video keeps popping up, so the person who has the floor is not the one taking up the screen.
Or if in Gallery View, nobody can tell who the speaker is.
Once the host or co-host spotlights someone, now they are the active speaker, and their window appears big and bold for everyone to see, even if someone else coughs or inadvertently (or intentionally!) “grabs” the microphone.
Now say you’re a participant. You would rather look at another window. Maybe someone on the meeting is graphic recording—taking live visual notes—and sharing them via their video. And you want to watch THAT instead of the speaker or the slides.
Cool! Just click “Pin Video” on that person’s window, and now THAT is what you’ll see, no matter what’s being spotlighted.
One of my favorite uses for Pin Video, though, is for interactive activities!
I pair people up and have them pin their partner’s video, and then it almost feels like they’re in a room alone together, even though we’re still all in the main Zoom room.
As host, I can see everyone in Gallery View, but the partners only see each other.
I share some of my favorites in my Non-Boring Virtual Meetings workshops, along with other interactive activities and essential facilitation tips, so sign up on the waitlist to get notified of upcoming sessions.
Thank you! The use of Pin for “interactive activities” is a wonderful idea I hadn’t thought of before. The problem with breakout rooms is suddenly everyone is seemingly cut off from both the speaker/host and the rest of the group. In real life, if you had a group of 150 participants and the the host told everyone to pair up and go off into a totally private space (I’m picturing each duo would leave the hotel ballroom and head off to one of their personal hotel rooms), doing these breakout rooms would take a lot of time to actually do. Many workshops will simply have people pair up, within the main room and the pair will do the suggested exercise. The host can see/hear some of what is going on in the entire room and everyone still feels connected to the host and the group, though it can get a bit noisy depending upon the nature of the exercise. Your “pin each other” idea can work somewhat like this, though it’s probably best for non-verbal exercises since everyone else’s mic comes through at the same volume. I would love to see if Zoom could arrange a “pair and pin” process like you describe and it automatically mutes (or dramatically reduces the volume) all the other attendees mics except for the speaker/host. I think we’ve only seen the beginning of what technology like Zoom is capable of doing.
Anyways, I just wanted to say thank you for your suggestion…I think this lives up to your business name of “Creative Sandbox”!
You’re absolutely right, Jason—paired pin video activities work best when everyone is muted. Mirror games, or activities where participants rely on body language or private chat work great. You can learn a lot about your/your partner’s relationship with leading and following and team dynamics. And the host can still see and verbally communicate with everyone, which is not possible if you send everyone to breakout rooms.
When I run this paired activities, some people invariably express how connected they feel to their partners afterwards. Even though we may be separated by thousands of miles, there’s a sensation of intimacy that being paired with someone creates, even when you’re not truly alone with them! It’s rather remarkable.
And you’re very welcome. I’m glad you found my article helpful!
can I pin myself — or have me on speaker view as a host — but also see everyone in gallery view. I am looking at ways to have the recording see me — but I also can see the people taking my class
As of this writing, when you pin someone (including yourself), or are viewing via Speaker View, you are not able to also see everyone else via Gallery View. However, if you’re on a computer you *can* see a handful of people at the top of your screen, so if your class is small, you may be able to see everyone. If it’s more than 4 or 5 people, you won’t be able to see everyone at the same time, but you can “scroll through” the class by clicking on the arrows to the right or left of the strip of little windows.
Hello, I just have a quick question. I take Zumba classes on zoom from my ipad. The host of one of my classes will spotlight different people during the class. I can never get back to the full screen of the host. Tried double clicking of the host in the gallery format. I don’t know if she is doing something different, because it just started within the last week. I take other exercise classes on zoom, and do not have any problems. Thank-you.
Becky Bruckner
Hi Rebecca,
This must have changed in a recent update, but when a Host spotlights someone, you are not able to pin someone anymore. You can switch to Gallery View, but in Speaker View, you will only be able to see whomever the Host has spotlighted.
I just tested this on iPad and MacBook to confirm. 🙂
I hope that clarifies things!
This is an odd Pin situation and it only occurs in this one situation. I can pin myself (to setup my area properly) BEFORE the host comes on but after that – Pin is gone. Someone said it had to do with permissions but I can’t find any such permission. I attempted to recreate the setup (Airplay, etc. )and still was able to pin myself in my test. I can send some screenshots if this isn’t clear.
I am host of an upcoming meeting of around 100 participants. I will be spotlighting several of them in sequence during the meeting. To make it easy to find the speakers among the 100 participants, I had the idea of pinning the eight-or-so speakers so they’d appear on my screen throughout the event. I am hearing that when you pin participant, it removes the spotlight from the current speaker. Is this true? Why are these two features linked in this way? Is there another way to control the order of tiles that doesn’t interfere with spotlight?
Hi John,
I love your thinking here, but you’re right, pinning will remove all spotlighted videos for everyone. I don’t know why they linked the two features, but that is indeed the case.
Here’s a suggestion, though: if you have your speakers click the “Raise Hand” button in the Participants panel, they will float to the top of the windows, and the list of participants in the Participants panel.
The only problem there is if you want to use this feature for participants to actually raise their hands, it will cause issues, of course!
Hi. Really useful article, thank you. I’ve got an upcoming meeting I want to record but only want one active speaker in the recording so even if someone else speaks or asks a Q, only that one speaker’s video will be recorded. Will I achieve that by spotlighting him?
Hi Karen,
The answer depends on whether you’re recording to your local computer or to the cloud.
If you’re recording locally, then yes (though run a test to confirm!!)
If you’re recording to the cloud, there’s an entire section inside your Zoom account at zoom.us for recordings. By default, EVERYTHING will recording to speaker view only, so whoever is speaking, that person will appear in the recording.
If you navigate to your Zoom account, head to Settings > Recording > Cloud recording, and you’ll find a whole bunch of checkboxes. There you can set how / what you want recorded: Active speaker; Gallery view; Shared screen; all of the above; etc.
I hope this is helpful!
Hello Karen, this is great detailed info on these features. I have a question as host/cohost I want to spotlight myself as I teach so participants only see me but as teacher (host/chose) I want to view all participants. If I spotlight myself, then go to gallery view, will spotlight of me teaching remain for participants?
Hi Dee,
If you spotlight yourself, but then switch to gallery view, your participants will still see the spotlight view.
Melissa
Hi Melissa, Great post.
I have this problem, maybe you could provide som insights about.
Zoom says 9 persons can be spotlighted (https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362653), however, when I tried it out. Only 4 was show on one page, and I had to click the arrow to see the others of the spotlighted persons including the one who was speaking.
What are your experiences of mass spotlight?
Hi Kenneth,
I’m afraid I don’t have a whole lot to add to this issue, as I don’t think I’ve spotlighted more than 4 or 5 people at a time.
Were you hosting from a computer? If you were hosting from an iPad or iPhone, your abilities to show people on one page would be much more limited.
Melissa – this Pin thing is dodgy. From my research – and I don’t host a lot of meetings so I have never had Multi-Pin as an option But seeing my ability to Pin myself (a yoga session) just for setup disappear, I wanted to understand why.
When the host uses multi-pin, participants can’t. Zoom doc does say this specifically and I didn’t want to believe it but it was also confirmed by the zoom tech support.
Apparently also, pin will not work if the host is coming through Airplay – I also couldn’t test that again because I didn’t have enough participants (only 2). I guess my question is – are you going to modify your original text above. Thanks.
Hi Patricia,
I haven’t used Airplay, so I can’t speak to that. And I’m not sure why your pin setup disappeared–that’s really frustrating!
I think the most important thing to keep in mind as a host, is that in order to showcase a speaker so that all participants see them, you want to use the Spotlight option, not the Pin option, as Pin will only showcase that window for one individual, not for the entire group. Spotlight showcases that window for the entire group.
I hope that makes sense!
Melissa
Hi Melissa – thank you for your article. I am running an event where I need to have 5 people on the screen at once – for panel discussions. Can I do this on Zoom Meetings? If I go to speaker view that just shows one person, the speaker, whereas if I go to gallery view that will show everyone on the event! I did look at trying to spotlight certain people, but this didn’t come up on the drop down menu when I hovered on the video of the person I wanted to add.
I have also signed up for Zoom Webinar and you can do all the above quite easily. However, then the participants can’t interact with one another as only have facility to chat with either ‘panelists’ or ‘panelists and attendees’.
Any thoughts gratefully received!
Thank you!
Alison
Hi Alison,
Yes, you can show 5 people at once in Zoom Meetings! You can Spotlight all 5 people by clicking on each of their windows (or names, in the Participant panel) one at a time.
The first person you click on, you’ll choose “Spotlight,” and each additional person you’ll choose “Add spotlight.”
I hope that makes sense!
Melissa
Hi Melissa,
I have 15 people in a meeting, I wish to record the meeting but only 3 of them will speak and I need to record that part when they speak and show no others on the recording. I tried a test with 5 people on the screen and spotlight 3 but it didn’t seem to work as I thought and then I couldn’t un spotlight, it got rather messy.
Hi Keith,
The best thing I can suggest is to go into your Zoom settings and make sure it’s set to record on Speaker View only. As far as I understand it, if you record to Speaker View, Zoom will only show the person who is speaking–one at a time.
Other than that, I would recommend running test sessions by logging in with as many devices as you can, in order to approximate the situation. You presumably won’t have 15, but you might have 3 or 4, with phones, iPads, computers, etc. And you might be able to recruit friends and family to help out. Then you can test out different settings and see how that changes things, if at all.
Hope this helps!