Help!! How to stop EMOJIS from FLOATING!!!! AA meetings! How are you handling this????

[Upland_AA]

Help!  During our AA meetings we allow emojis in the reactions, and it's mildly distracting but fine.  Now they float up the screen, and the only answer is to turn off reactions.  This would piss people off.  

It appears that you can limit reactions in webinars.  I suspect Zoom did this on purpose to force people to upgrade.  But our meering ID numbers is years old, and I don't know if making it a webinar would look different. 

My concern is unmuting.  Once the meeting is going, we allow people to unmute themselves.  Is that true if we upgrade to webinar?  Can we retain our meeting ID number?  

Help PLEASE!

[Needybeagle]

I agree with the sentiment.

Reactions are fine to enable and we actually encourage our participants to use it.

However, as the meeting organizer, I would like the option to control how it displays.

Webinar has the feature to control how reactions display, but on an individual level. I think that feature should be made available for meeting organizers (host/co-host).

We run trainings and workshops and getting reactions from participants are nice. However, having it floating is not a very professional setting, or distracting even. We would even prefer the older version where it only displays on a participants video.

[Upland_AA]

I'm aware we can turn off reactions.  We don't want to do that.....we simply want to stop them from floating from the bottom up.  It is so tone deaf for Zoom to force this down our throats.  I think we can fix it if we go to webinar, but then there is a concern something else might come with it, and we don't want to lose our meeting ID number.  

[ZoomWithTiffany]

I noticed this too and I also do not want to turn off emojis. Our organization generally uses Webinars, as it allows us to have more control but we do have some people who use meetings. I do find it frustrating that I can not turn off the floating emojis for meetings at the admin level. It can only be turned of on the individual level, inside the app. At least that is all that I could find. 

In a Webinar participants can unmute themselves. I am not sure about keeping the meeting ID if you change to a Webinar.

[dswedlow]

ZOOM, this request seems reasonable: Allow each user to enable or disable seeing emojis, so that the host doesn't have to globally decide for everyone (similar to each individual seeing chat preview). And make it easy to find, like in view "minimize distractions" as on or off.

[debbie329]

Zoom ‘asked’ me if I wanted to ‘try’ it. I said ok. Now I don’t know how to get rid of it.  That’s BS! 

[ZoomWithTiffany]

I was able to find 1 spot that would turn part of if off. 

In the Workplace app go to settings > Meetings & webinars > Scroll down until you see Reactions > Turn off "Animate Emojis. 

Unfortunately this is only for the individual, for meetings, and doesn't remove the "send with effect emojis." This will only change the reactions emojis. 

[kathcom]

I'm having the same problem in a Zoom meeting I run once a week. I'm the host and the account owner. The floating emojis are distracting and inappropriate.

I was able to disable them in settings several weeks ago, and it worked for a couple of meetings. The "send with effects" option was grayed out. Now it's back, and I can't disable it. I assume one of the updates took the option away from me. 

I don't want to entirely disable emojis. They're useful in the chat, and users would rebel. It seems like every time Zoom introduces something new, it breaks one more thing, without fixing the other things it has previously broken. (Like the automatic hand-lowering feature that drives everyone nuts: Make new features optional, Zoom, please!)

[MGSR]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @kathcom! You can click your profile picture > Settings > Meeting & Webinars > Disable Animate emojis.

[Mashadinoor]

How about when the zoom is already start? Is that possible to disable it through Host Tools?

[ZoomWithTiffany]

I have shared this spot to turn off the animated emojis in a previous reply on this thread. This is only for individual users. We admins want to turn this feature off in the Zoom.us account settings for everyone without turning off emojis.

[MGSR]

Hello @ZoomWithTiffany, 

To disable animated emojis at the account level, sign in to the Zoom web portal as an admin with permission to edit account settings. Navigate to Account Management > Account Settings, then click the Team Chat tab. Locate the Animated Emojis option and toggle it off. If prompted, confirm the change. You can optionally lock the setting to prevent users from modifying it at the group level.

To apply this setting for a specific group, go to User Management > Groups, select the desired group, and adjust the Animated Emojis option under the Team Chat tab.

[ZoomWithTiffany]

Thank you, Mark, for your response — it was helpful.

When I couldn’t find the setting you were referring to, I went to the Feature Release Controls section. There, I found the "Animated Emojis for Zoom Rooms" setting and set it to disabled. Interestingly, this seemed to trigger the appearance of the other settings in Account Management that you mentioned.

It might seem unusual, but we also noticed that some settings appeared to revert without our action. For example, we had previously turned off all emojis for a specific group, but those settings were back on. We went ahead and made the necessary changes again, as we've still decided to disable emojis for that group.

I'm pleased to see that a separate setting is available to disable animated emojis for Webinars and Zoom Rooms.

[WomensPotluck]

Hello Mark,

We are also an AA group and having this exact same problem! 

There is no option within the Team Chat settings that is labelled "animated emojis". I only have the option to disable all emojis, or restrict to basic emojis. Searching "animated" in the account settings only brings up a setting to do with animated GIFs. 

I also do not see anything to do with Feature Release Control, which Kathcom mentioned, available in our account, which I'm assuming is because we aren't an Enterprise or Education account.

[MGSR]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @WomensPotluck! Apologies for the confusion. At this time, meeting reactions can only be disabled at the account level. However, the animated emoji reactions that go up during meetings and webinars can only be turned off individually by each user.

[kathcom]

Hi, Mark:

Thank you. I have "Animate Emojis" toggled off, but other people can still use it. I'm the meeting host, and I need it to work for everyone. I've disabled:

"Meeting reactions

Allow meeting participants to communicate without interrupting by reaction with emojis (e.g. clap, heart, laugh). These emojis are found in the Reactions menu in the toolbar, and when selected, they display on the participant's video and in the participants list for 10 seconds. Participants can change their emoji skin tone in Settings."

I'm hoping this will disable the floating emojis while still allowing people to use emojis in the chat.

[MGSR]

Hello @kathcom, 

Welcome to the Zoom Community! We're glad to have you here.

I'm sorry for the late response. You may disable it at an account level and will still be able to use emojis in the team/meeting chat. You may read more in this article. 

[rje1]

It looks like your solution is only for participants.  You missed the part where we want to turn this of at the HOST level.   

[curiousone]

Yes, we have this exact same problem at our online meditation group meetings. The floating emojis are very disruptive! But the regular reactions are fine. We need to have some way to constrain this, it would be great if it was in host tools!

[bwd63]

Another voice on this. The animated emojis are NOT acceptable in my context — large teaching calls related to presence and trauma healing. They are utterly, absurdly disruptive and unprofessional in this context. We have been apologizing to complaining participants. I have just spent half an hour pursuing dead ends of advice for disabling them. Please, you MUST make disabling animated emojis in calls an account level option.

[bwd63]

@MGSR, please follow up on this. It is a serious, time-sensitive issue for some of us and needs a priority response.

[MGSR]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @bwd63! We appreciate your concern. Currently, this feature can only be disabled by users. We encourage you to submit your feedback so it can be reviewed by the appropriate team for consideration in future updates.

[sachitaussig]

Just adding an additional request on this (in case things can get prioritized by multiple reports) for hosts to be able to disable the animated emoji setting for meetings so that no one can send or see floating emojis. We have large class sizes and many of our students do not have the technical skills necessary to adjust their own settings, or they use their zoom account for multiple things with different meeting cultures. Thank you!