slides as virtual background

Regressive Step in the Wrong Direction: Zoom’s Slide-as-Background Removal is a UX Failure

Zoom’s decision to remove the "Slides as Virtual Background" feature isn’t just inconvenient—it’s bafflingly out of touch with how modern professionals, educators, and facilitators actually communicate in 2025. In one update, Zoom has stripped away a function that allowed presenters to engage, personalize, and elevate virtual presentations in ways that made sense for human connection in a digital world.

Let’s be clear: the ability to be present alongside your content and integrated into the narrative space—was a game-changer. It humanized virtual presenting. It aligned with brain science about attention and visual anchoring. And most importantly, it gave people a reason to choose Zoom over less interactive platforms.

Now? We’re back to an interface that undermines every best practice in virtual facilitation. Presenters are minimized, fixed positions. Slides dominate. Audience attention drops. And ironically, Zoom—the platform that once promised to make meetings more personal—has just made them more mechanical.

What’s worse is the silence around the change. No roadmap. No clear rationale. No replacement that matches the power and elegance of the original feature. For educators, keynote speakers, sales professionals, and facilitation experts who built workflows around this functionality, it’s a slap in the face.

Zoom has effectively told its power users: “We’re prioritizing something else. Good luck.”

Well, here’s the problem, remove the tools we rely on, and we won’t just complain. We will move. To platforms that understand that visual storytelling and presenter presence aren’t nice-to-haves—they’re non-negotiables. I am now researching other platforms to do what zoom used to do elegantly. 

Zoom, if you’re listening: walk this back. Fast. Or risk becoming the next tool that was great... until it wasn’t. And if you think your version does what they old one did. You don't know your tool or applications as well as you thought. 

Do you have any new information about when the slides as background feature will be available again? You promised it would be ready by June. I contacted you again in June. It is now mid-July and still nothing.

I would like to upgrade my license to include webinars, but at the moment I am still limited by the missing functionality. I have to use a year-old version of Zoom to be able to use this unique feature that you removed.

When will "slides as background" be available again in the current version of ZOOM?

I think it is working again. I was able to use it last week.