How To Use Waiting Rooms In Zoom

Do you want to hold everyone that tries to enter your meeting room in Zoom? Or are you trying to filter out people before letting them inside of your video conference? Either way, the Waiting Room in Zoom can help you. Follow our quick guide below, and we’ll show you how to use the feature whether you’re using the app on your phone or computer.

Waiting Rooms in Zoom gives the host more control over people that tries to enter their meeting. This feature holds the attendees to prevent them from directly joining the room even if they have the invitation link.

As the meeting organizer, you can hold people that try to join the room and accept only the ones you want. As such, you can provide more security to your meetings and avoid any unwanted individuals from participating.

With that in mind, here’s our quick guide on how to use a waiting room in your Zoom meetings.

How to enable the waiting room in your Zoom meeting

By default, the host of the meeting can put other participants in a waiting room in Zoom. With the help of this feature, the host can hold people from entering the meeting immediately and admit them one by one or all at once.

You can use waiting rooms whether you’re hosting a meeting on the Zoom desktop, web, and mobile app. Check our quick tutorials below to learn how.

Note: We used a Zoom personal account on this guide.

On your computer:

1. Host a meeting on the Zoom desktop or web app.
2. Click the Participants option at the bottom of the meeting window.
   
   
3. Click More at the bottom part of the Participants window and select Enable Waiting Room.
   
   

Once someone tries to enter your meeting, they’ll stay in the waiting room for the meantime until you deny or admit them. You can also put people back into the waiting room by hovering on their name on the participants list, clicking More, and selecting “Put in Waiting Room” on the menu.

If you can’t find the option to use the Waiting Room on the meetings you host, visit the Zoom web portal, go to Settings > Meeting, and enable the feature under the Security section.

On your phone:

1. Open Zoom on your device and host a meeting.
2. Once you’re inside the video conference room, tap “More” at the bottom of the screen.
   
   
3. Select Security on the menu.
   
   
4. Make sure to enable the Waiting Rooms feature.
   
   

With Waiting Rooms enabled, you’ll hold everyone that attempts to join your meeting. In this way, you can deny unwanted users entry to the room and accept only the ones you expect to come.

You can also put people back in the waiting room by opening the Participants, tapping the person you want to send back, and selecting “Put in Waiting Room” on the menu.

To wrap things up

Now that you know how to enable waiting rooms on your Zoom meetings, you get more control over other participants as the organizer. When holding multiple attendees, you can choose to admit them one by one or all at once.

Please note that enabling this feature prevents other participants from joining the room without the host. As such, there’s no need to worry about people that try to enter your scheduled meetings while you’re not in the room.

That’s all we have on our guide! For more tips and tutorials, visit our site frequently, and don’t forget to check our latest posts and updates.