How to Always Show Zoom Meeting Control Bar for Quick Access

How to Always Show Zoom Meeting Control Bar for Quick Access

Key Points:

• When in a Zoom meeting, many people have their microphone, and maybe webcam enabled.
• At some point during the meeting, something can happen in the background, and you might want to interact with the meeting controls to manage the meeting experience.
• Access to readily available meeting controls is critical in enhancing your meeting experience.
• However, sometimes the meeting control bar disappears during the meeting or as soon as you start sharing your screen.
• The disappearance of the control toolbar can be frustrating, especially for hosts, which might make them lose control of the meeting.

Zoom has several meeting controls that allow users to manage meetings more effectively. Access to these controls during a meeting is critical in enhancing the meeting experience.

However, sometimes the toolbar disappears and gets difficult to find. People complain that they have to stop presenting or leave the meeting and rejoin to get the floating control bar, which can be quite a hassle.

To prevent this, you can turn on the Always Show Meeting Control feature and make the control toolbar always visible during a meeting in two different ways.

1: How to Unhide Zoom Meeting Controls When You’re Already in a Meeting

If you are already in a meeting and the control toolbar disappears, you can unhide it in four simple steps:

1. Click the Stop Share button
2. Scroll down to Video Settings
3. Click on the General tab — a new pane will open on your right
4. Check the Always show meeting controls box

Close the Settings windows. When you start screen sharing again, the control toolbar will float at the top of the Zoom screen during the entire meeting. The people you’re sharing the screen with will not see the toolbar.

If you have two monitors, you can move the toolbar to the second monitor, which will stay visible.

2: How to Always Show Meeting Controls Before Starting a Meeting

You can activate the Always show meeting control feature before starting a meeting. Here’s the step-by-step procedure:

1. Launch your Zoom app
2. Find the Settings icon at the top right of the Zoom screen
3. Select General at the top left on the settings window that opens
4. Find the Always show meeting controls option and check the box

When you start a Zoom meeting, the toolbar will always be visible at the top of your screen.

Why Is it Important to Always Show Meeting Controls?

Reasons why people may need to activate the floating meeting controls on Zoom include instances when they need to:

• Get quick access to commonly used features to save time
• Improve video conferencing efficiency by having access to desired controls
• Eliminate the hassle of searching through the search bar in the menu to have the desired controls

Why Does Zoom Hide Control Bar When Sharing Screen on Zoom?

The main reason why Zoom hides the control bar when you’re sharing the screen is to allow you to focus your attention on the meeting. While attention is critical when holding an online meeting, hiding the control toolbar denies users access to critical features that might enhance the meeting experience.

Using Zoom Keyboard Shortcuts to Control Meeting Experiences

Zoom has useful keyboard shortcuts for desktop clients, which you can use equally to execute controls. However, some keyboard shortcuts for control will only work when the toolbar is floating on your screen during the meeting.

To explore the shortcuts available for use during the meeting, go to the Settings icon after launching the app on Windows or Mac. Next, scroll down to Keyboard Shortcuts on the left pane of the screen.

The Default Control Keyboard Shortcuts for Zoom on Windows

There are several hotkeys that can execute the control functions during a Zoom meeting, including:

• Alt + V: To switch video On/Off

• Alt + A: To switch audio On/Off

• Alt + M: To switch audio On/Off for everyone except the host

• Alt + Shift + S: To switch screen sharing On/Off (The shortcut only works when the meeting controls toolbar floats on the screen)

• Alt + S: To stop the current screen share and launches a new one (The shortcut only works when the meeting controls toolbar floats on the screen)

• Alt + T: To pause/resume screen share (The shortcut only works when the meeting controls toolbar floats on the screen)

• Alt + N: To switch camera

• Ctrl + Alt + Shift + H: To switch the floating meeting controls on/off

• Alt + Y: To raise or lower your hand

• Alt + Shift + R: To start remote control

• Alt + Shift + G: To stop remote control

Navigation Hotkeys for Zoom on Windows

Apart from controls, you can use keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation through Zoom. The default navigation shortcuts include:

• F6: The shortcut switches Zoom windows

• Ctrl + Alt +  Shift: Takes you to the meeting controls

• Page Up: Takes you to the previous video stream in Gallery

• Page Down:  Takes you to the next video stream in Gallery

• Alt + I: Takes you to the Invite menu

• Ctrl + Tab: Takes you to the next tab, right

• Ctrl + Shift + Tab: Takes you to the previous tab left

• Ctrl + Up: Takes you to the previous chat on Zoom

• Ctrl + Down: Takes you to the next chat on Zoom

• Ctrl + T: Jumps to the next chat

• Ctrl + W: Closes the current chat

Interface Control Shortcut For Zoom on Windows

You can also use shortcuts to control the interface of your Zoom screen. Here are some of the hotkeys to leverage:

• Alt: To switch the Always Show Meeting Control Toolbar on/off

• Alt + F: To turn the full screen on and off

• Alt + H: To toggle the In-Meeting chat panel

• Alt + U: To toggle participant channel

• Alt + F1: To switch active speaker view

• Alt + F2: To switch to gallery video view

• Alt + F4: To close the front window

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