Private Chat Options Disappear When Participant Joins Meeting

[LAbare]

Hi Zoom Community,

Wondering if anyone else is running into this glitch.

Today (06.09.25), I noticed that my chat options changed unexpectedly during a Zoom session. Behind the scenes, all of my meeting settings allow participants to chat publicly and privately (host only, everyone, and individual participants). However, as soon as someone else joined my meeting, the private chat options disappeared. The only option available was to chat with everyone.

I double-checked my Zoom settings—everything is enabled to allow full chat functionality. To troubleshoot, I set up a test session and had someone join. As soon as they entered the room, the same thing happened: chat instantly defaulted to “Everyone” only, and all private chat options were removed.

Private messaging is a key part of how I facilitate training sessions, so this is a major disruption.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Would love to know if there’s a fix or if this is a known bug.

Thanks in advance,
Lenore

[DexterCool]

Yes this happened / is happening to me too as HOST. Only public chats available. (Plus I cannot annotate other people's shared presentations). Fix needed ASAP.

[Leilaure]

Yes, same here, I cannot chat with my participants directly. This is a huge issue.

[LAbare]

Thanks for jumping in here! I hope someone with a solution sees this convo and saves the day. Fingers crossed!

[alampkin]

Hi there! I noticed an issue on my Zoom today too - for me, it appears that Zoom has changed how you private message people and it's no longer a drop down. When I open my chat, I now have to click the blue icon on the top left with the pencil, and then can message someone directly. Hope that helps!

[pmassey]

Even though I was able to figure out how to private message — I’m unable to see my private messages as a host or cohost. This is such a pain. 
I can’t imagine that zoom has NOT provided easy to find guides on how to use the chat with these awful changes c

[MGSR]

Hello community members,

We're sorry for the confusion. 
If you click on the blue pen on the top left of the chat, you will have an option to send a message to the main chat and new chat where you can send a private message by searching the name of the attendee you want to send a private message to.

Let us know if this helps or if you need further assistance.

 

[DexterCool]

I'm genuinely curious - when and how did you let users know about this? How did I miss this?

[MGSR · Accepted solution]

Hi @DexterCool! It’s been added to the June 4th release notes—you can check it out at this link.

[DexterCool]

So you mean we have to wade through this to be informed of changes?

[pmassey]

This seems like a huge miss on Zoom’s part. 

[LAbare]

Thank you Mark for jumping in here with the clarification. I've been able to successfully use the new chat setup. Thanks again for continuing to improve a tool central to so many of our businesses! Have a great weekend. Thanks Everyone else for chiming in too!

[treelight]

I tried this. It is cumbersome and very distracting from the call. And... when I try to send the message to my "New Chat" it won't send. Why fix what ain't broke? Especially with something that doesn't work. How did you get it to work? (But I hope Zoom will go back the way it was.)

[DexterCool]

Thanks ChatGPT!

[ABstuff]

So - you made it more complex and complicated to direct chat.

Why?

[ABstuff]

I just looked through the June 4th release - it's very short - and this issue does not seem to be addressed. 

I recommend focusing less on emojis and more on ease of use of the product.

[DexterCool]

Why not have in-app notifications to alert users to these changes? Nobody is going to trawl through release notes to find these changes!

[pmassey]

Yes, it’s not user friendly.

Zoom didn’t send timely notifications to warn of this change. 

[pmassey]

I have the same question. 
as an L&D facilitator it makes not one iota of sense that Zoom has totally missed the mark in communicating clearly on this issue and it’s bugs. 😞

[KStevenson]

This seems like a solution searching for a problem. Why was this changed? Very unintuitive, I'm another who just found this bc I was Googleing the issue.

[treelight]

I tried this. It is cumbersome and very distracting from the call. And... when I try to send the message to my "New Chat" it won't send. Why fix what ain't broke? Especially with something that doesn't work.

[AKvirtual]

Enabling subgroups is a nice addition.  But, requiring that participants click on the blue pen in order to DM/PM a host or other participant requires more work on the part of a participant who experiences physical disabilities or participants unfamiliar with the app to do what used to be a simple action of clicking on a pull down menu in the "chat."  Navigating up and down on the screen for people who might be having to use alternative access devices is extra work and may actually inhibit accessibility.  Is there any chance that the ability to chat privately and directly with the host (and participants if the host activates that ability) by clicking within the chat window, could be reinstated while at the same time keeping the new feature of enabling subgroups?

[pmassey]

This discombobulated chat is NOT accessibility friendly and misses the goal for ease of use. 

[pmassey]

No. It’s not good enough and does not address the difficulties with seeing my private chat as a cohost or host. 

[sparklingsoul]

So glad you wrote this. I was getting paranoid because I joined 3 Zoom meetings from 3 different organizations this week, and all of them had private chat disabled (and normally they don't). Zoom must have made some change.

[treelight]

I tried this new way with the blue pencil. It is cumbersome and very distracting from the call. And... when I try to send the message to my "New Chat" it won't send. Why fix what ain't broke? Especially with something that doesn't work. Kindly clarify.

[djones1]

Not a fan of this update either. I am in a unique situation as I am holding classes daily for a large number of people. I have it set up where the participants can only chat either me the host or a cohost privately. Now, I am missing private chats, as a participant will send a chat to me, but it won't notify me that a chat was sent. I will have to manually cycle through the participants to see if a private chat was sent to me. It's very easy to miss a chat from a trainee. Is there a way to turn on private chat notifications with this update?

[DexterCool]

I've noted another issue. When chatting to one individual and then wanting to chat to another it is very easy to mistakenly add this second person to the first person to make a group chat (which I didn't want) leading to messages meant for one person to go to both! Embarrassing. It was fine the way it was - you did pilot/test all of these changes before greenlighting them, right? Right??

[MitchG]

Yes this started happening to me today..Aug 2nd...any fixes?