"Hide Non-Video Participants" option missing/greyed out?

[SSDTechWH]

Hi, I work for a company that helps handle virtual events and recently some of our clients have been having issues with their zoom view in the meetings.

On their computers they are unable to activate the "Hide Non-Video Participants" option from the drop down menu within the call. Similarly when they go into their video settings the option is greyed out.

From what I understand from the most recent time this happened the person was on a HP Elitebook 840 G7 laptop

(B&H Link included so you can see the specs)

While not a devastating setback, this has proven to be a bit annoying for our presenters as they are unable to have a more "focused" view without either pinning or entering speaker view.

My theory is that there is some incompatibility or a minor bug in a recent release, but because I do not directly manage these PCs the troubleshooting support I can offer is somewhat limited.

In at least one instance the person definitely had the most recent version of zoom installed when we tried to test the matter.

I have scoured the web and found only 1 other person with this issue and they didn't receive an answer, so I'm hoping we can make one here.

[PaullaJack12]

I am show some possibilis here such you're not able to find the "Hide Non-Video Participants" option or it's greyed out during a video call, it's possible that the feature is not available in the video conferencing platform you're using. However, if the feature is available but greyed out, it could be because you are not the host of the call or do not have the necessary permissions to access the feature. In this case, you can try asking the host or the person who scheduled the call to enable the option for you. 

[SSDTechWH]

Hi PaulaJack, unfortunately we did test if it was a host or co-host permission issue by sharing host capabilities with the affected person and that didn't resolve the issue.

In general there is no meeting setting that governs when participants can control that feature, so it's not something can be toggled on or off at the meeting creation or host level.

[zoomer_tom]

Hide non-video participants option is in the View menu for participants. The view button is in the top-right corner. Have you considered doing webinar instead of meeting?

[SSDTechWH]

I'm aware of where the option normally lives. I made this topic specifically because this is a strange edge case for which I'm hoping to find others who might've had this issue, or to gain the attention of a someone from zoom.

As for using a webinar, while making the speaker a panelist would simplify their view, it doesn't solve the issue at hand, and instead creates new logistical issues with training etc. We do own a webinar license, but the tech stack we use keeps the speakers away from interfacing with the webinar side of things.