Adjusting the speaker view size during screen sharing

[Beatitude]

Hi everyone,

As a moderator (or host) in several meetings, I assist presenters during their meetings. Most of them use their personal computers and use Zoom only because they have to. Personal documents can be visible and alerts can pop up anytime. For this reason, I always advise sharing only one window at a time, not the complete screen's content, which means they can't quickly switch to another app if needed. In PowerPoint, that means they can't easily switch from one presentation to another.

I occasionally receive requests from speakers (co-hosts) to adjust how they appear on screen to viewers. However, I haven’t been able to find a definitive solution to this issue. Speakers are often deeply focused on their presentation, and many don’t have the time, knowledge, or patience to navigate Zoom’s many and ever-changing settings.

Most speakers use dual-screen setups, with their secondary screen having much higher resolution than their webcam. This results in their video feed appearing very small compared to the presentation, and some of them prefer a setup where their video is dynamically resized to be more prominent, similar to how it might appear on a TV screen. This problem is even more noticeable in the recording, where the speaker's video is so small it’s nearly impossible to see, even in full screen.

Is there a way for the host to quickly adjust the size of a speaker’s video feed for other participants?

Another common request is to have the participants appear on the secondary screen (the higher-resolution one) and the presentation on the main screen (the lower-resolution one), to avoid the awkward “side-gaze” effect. I can't possibly know where they put their secondary screen. Some of them have it on the right, some reversed them in their OS (logical left is physical right…), some have it above the laptop. I just can't know.

Is there a quick way to switch Zoom windows between monitors? A single-click solution would greatly help presenters in maintaining eye contact no matter if presenting or answering a question.

Lastly, when using PowerPoint's presentation mode, speakers often lose sight of the participants entirely, which many find uncomfortable because they miss out on visual feedback from the audience. Additionally, many dislike how Zoom controls overlap the presentation slides.

It seems that since the pandemic, Zoom has added many new options that may be helpful to some users, but they've also made the interface needlessly complicated for others, often neglecting basic ergonomic considerations. Among other irritating issues in my use cases:

• full-screen by default. The presenter has to go through an additional step just to start his/her presentation.
• No sound on screen sharing by default. I take great care in embedding videos in whatever presentation they're making so as to avoid disrupting the presentation flow by switching to another app.

Thanks for any insights!