Feature Request: Ability to Disable Waiting Room Mid-Meeting | Community
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dat136
Newcomer
November 14, 2024
Solved

Feature Request: Ability to Disable Waiting Room Mid-Meeting

  • November 14, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 25 views

Hi Zoom Community,

 

I’m a longtime Zoom user and paying customer, and I want to raise a concern about the rigid controls around the Waiting Room feature. While I understand the importance of security, the current setup creates significant challenges for real-world use cases, particularly for large webinars and meetings.

 

My Situation:

 

•I recently hosted a webinar with over 400 participants.

•I wanted to use the Waiting Room at the start of the session to admit my initial group of attendees.

•However, I found that I couldn’t disable the Waiting Room mid-meeting, meaning I had to manually admit participants throughout the entire event.

 

This was incredibly disruptive and impractical, especially as a presenter trying to focus on delivering content.

 

Why This is a Problem:

 

•The option to disable the Waiting Room during a meeting is grayed out, forcing me to manage admissions manually for latecomers.

•I understand the focus on “one security measure,” but this is unnecessarily rigid for scenarios that don’t require extreme security.

•Many users, like me, need flexibility in how we manage the Waiting Room feature—starting with it enabled but disabling it later on to streamline the session.

 

Suggested Solutions:

 

1.Allow hosts to toggle the Waiting Room on and off mid-meeting.

2.Offer a time-based auto-disable option (e.g., the Waiting Room automatically turns off 10 minutes after the meeting starts).

3.Reconsider the “one security measure” rule—it’s overkill for many non-sensitive meetings and webinars.

 

Why This Matters:

 

For professional users managing large groups, the inability to disable the Waiting Room mid-meeting creates unnecessary friction and diminishes the user experience. It’s not just an inconvenience—it actively undermines our ability to use Zoom effectively.

 

I’m hoping Zoom will prioritize this kind of flexibility in future updates. In the meantime, has anyone else experienced this issue, and are there any additional workarounds you’ve found helpful?

 

Looking forward to hearing from others and hopefully seeing some improvements soon!

 

Thanks,

David

Best answer by meriment

You can use APIs to trigger a change to the waiting room settings of a meeting at a pre-specified time e.g. 10 minutes into the meeting. If you are not a developer there is a Zoom app, Salepager, that lets you schedule changes to a meeting including enabling or disabling a waiting room when scheduling Zoom meetings.

3 replies

M
Newcomer
merimentAnswer
Newcomer
December 1, 2024

You can use APIs to trigger a change to the waiting room settings of a meeting at a pre-specified time e.g. 10 minutes into the meeting. If you are not a developer there is a Zoom app, Salepager, that lets you schedule changes to a meeting including enabling or disabling a waiting room when scheduling Zoom meetings.

    E
    Newcomer
    eastbayzoom
    Newcomer
    January 23, 2026

    I’m probably missing something, but I wasn’t able to change the waiting room setting during a meeting that would impact the current instance of the meeting.  I can definitely change the overall setting (whether it’s on or off by default), but it doesn’t turn on or off the waiting room for the current meeting.  

    Python Code example (getting a 204 return message):

    response2=requests.patch("https://api.zoom.us/v2/meetings/" + str(mtgid),
        headers={
          "Content-Type": "application/json",
          "Authorization": "Bearer " + token
        },
        params={
          "occurrence_id": "(obscured)"
        },
       json={
          "settings": {
             "waiting_room": False #or True
            }
        }
    )

    Please let me know you are achieving the result of changing the current state of the waiting room using the API for a meeting in progress.

    Thanks!

    D
    Newcomer
    dat136Author
    Newcomer
    December 3, 2024

    Thank you so much for this! Much appreciated. 

    bstrelko
    Community Champion | Customer
    bstrelko
    Community Champion | Customer
    January 23, 2026

    Are you unable to toggle off “Enable Waiting Room” in the Host Tools sub-menu (apologies for any confusion, I capitalized “Host Tools” properly and Zoom doesn’t know how to use Title Case consistently across it’s product line)? This should do exactly what you’re asking for:
     

     

    E
    Newcomer
    eastbayzoom
    Newcomer
    January 23, 2026

    I can absolutely do that using the Host Tools sub-menu.  The use case I’m trying to solve is unusual, but would require turning off the waiting room programmatically during a meeting.  From the earlier reply, I was under the impression that one could use the API to change the waiting room setting for a meeting that was currently active.  I tried doing that (using the API), but was only able to impact the overall setting for the meeting in general, not for the current instance, and wondered if the approach I was using was correct.

    Thanks!

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