Stop lowering my hand!

[drosselli]

Recently a change was made to auto-lower raised hands when people stop talking. This is not working and we use the RAISED HAND for stand-ups and stand-downs to show who hasn't gone yet. Now, the system keeps lowering hands because someone may comment on another persons update and the system thinks that person is done talking. It's really annoying and not helpful.

[LH8]

I agree this is an awful feature! Please change back to how it was previously. Let us be responsible for raising and lowering our hands during a meeting.

[louisbclark]

I submitted this as a bug to zoom

here’s zoom’s reply (unbelievable!!!)

Angelica Cabreza (C)(Zoom)

Jul 25, 2023, 18:04 EDT

Hi Lou, 

Thank you for contacting Zoom Support, my name is Angelica I'd be happy to assist you. 

I understand that you're having issues with the "raised hand" feature. I'll be glad to assist you with this. It looks like this is a known bug "Raise Hand" not removed when the host uses Lower All Hands. A problem was fixed when the host used the option to Lower all hands or Clear all feedback, and a raised hand would remain visible, this was resolved in our latest release.

You can view in release notes from 8/28/22 in this article https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/8599706457229-Release-notes-for-August-28-2022. 

[kl18]

Today, I was at a meeting on Zoom and 2x my hand was lowered before I had a chance to speak. How can I correct this? 

[BrassRing]

Seemingly nothing. MANY of us have been asking SINCE THE "FEATURE" WAS ADDED to have the ability to turn this off.

Zoom is ignoring us...typical.

Keep complaining, though!

EAS

[aaaaaaaaaaa]

This feature has been driving me bats##t.  What were you thinking???  And why would you ever spring this on your users without lots of warning AND THE ABILITY TO TURN IT OFF!!!!!!!!

[Kamon]

Thank you for this topic, it is extremely disturbing and brought a lot of distress to our meetings. I am hosting several regular Zoom Rooms, and it is in not one meeting, where this feature is helpful.

Please remove it, or give the host to disable it!

[ms-esnet]

Agree that this feature plain stinks.  Can we PLEASE give an opt-out option?!

• In most cases, I (like many others in this thread) do not want to lower my hand, as I am doing a quick follow-up and not asking my full question/making my comment.
• It's clear that whoever decided to implement this feature has never been in an actual meeting.  Even if I want to lower my hand, I DO NOT want to be interrupted by a pop-up--that ends up distracting me and often causes me to lose train-of-thought.  It's a terribly disruptive feature that creates even more "Zoom fatigue."

[4iBSP]

Agree with everyone here, this feature is disruptive.

This thread seems worthy of a response now from Zoom?

Is there any communication or update on future plans for this 'feature'?

[squirrel_oof]

How do I turn this feature off?? I just scrolled the entire "meeting settings" section of the Zoom advanced settings. I don't see any option to turn off this feature. Don't tell me Zoom has rolled out the ability to turn off this feature yet? The auto-lower hand causes confusion. I do not see this as a helpful, one-size fits-all, should be automatically enabled, feature. So strange that we can't turn off the auto-lower hand after unmuting feature.

Zoom customer service peeps - please respond? Thanks in advance!

[KathS]

I completely agree with everyone here! In our meetings a raised hand means we would like to take a turn at reading. However now, if someone asks a question their hand is automatically lowered (unless they are quick enough to cancel) and they lose their turn. This happened to me yesterday and now I will have to wait a week to get a turn at reading. VERY annoying. We need the option to turn this off

[ChuckES1]

PLEASE make this configurable.  This is SUPER annoying.  When I have my hand raised, and then speak to help answer a question from another participant, I lose my place in line.   I had to wait 45 min because I went to the back of the line a few times.

[gville23]

AGREED!!! GIVE THE OPTION TO DISABLE!! Super annoying.

[MrNeilAlan]

This is a terrible "feature".  If you miss the cancel opportunity, your spot in line to speak is forfeit.  There must be a way to turn this off AND if users want this feature - there must be a way to increase the timeout before having your hand lowered.  #MicrosoftTEAMS

[AweStruckArt]

I was misled by the solved title in this, did I miss the solution somewhere? Am I blind? This setting is so disruptive.

[monacojay]

Let's automate raising hands too with facial recognition detecting that they are thinking about something to say. Maybe we should also make people leave the meeting once they stop talking.

[Yourwebgirl]

I cannot believe the complaints for this have been coming in here, it looks like, since June and nothing has been done about this! A raised hand, in my meeting, means you want a turn to speak for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, you may comment on what someone else has said and then focus on the next speaker when they take their turn. I forget, every meeting that this “auto lowering” happens. I’ve only caught the countdown once or twice. This is a horrible “enhancement” and it obviously wasn’t thought through as the host still has the ability to manually lower hands. 
A little UX research/ user testing goes a long way! I’m a Sr UX Engineer and would volunteer my time to assist here. However, all the research has been done here and the information is sitting in, what  appears to be, a blackhole. This is quite sad for an application that means so much to my organization. We have meetings going on in multiple cities all over the world. Each location pays for its own zoom account. It would be a shame if we all jumped to another platform over something so easy to fix. I’m gonna try, though I can’t promise success, to speak directly to someone at Zoom about this.

[NwkBrickcity]

Totally agree and also the insanity is that why set up a forum for users and then sit back and not even respond to anything that is such an insult to even hosting an environment where users may be able to make suggestions that improve the quality of their user experience.  Corporations have become chicken she-it and hide behind bots and automation to cover up for their incompetence. This AI automation is scary. It’s creepy and I want no parts of it

[cazually]

Please Zoom, kill this "feature" auto hand lowering is the stupidest thing you have ever "added" it takes the speaker out of the nice top left corner and makes you chase after them in a multipage meeting, if not kill, then please give us the ability to kill it ourselves in a setting

[cnguyen2195]

Zoom, please fix this and allow it as a setting to change in the host settings. Thank you. 

[BrassRing]

Dozens, if not hundreds have made this request or been irritated by this "feature," and yet Zoom is ignoring us. Clearly, they don't plan to fix this.

[BrassRing]

I was in a meeting waiting for my turn, but made the mistake of unmuting to join in wishing someone a happy birthday. ZOOM PROMPTLY LOWERED MY HAND AND TOOK ME OUT OF THE QUEUE AND I LOST MY TURN.

ISSUE STILL NOT FIXED, STILL UNNECESSARY, STILL ANNOYING, STILL PISSED AT ZOOM FOR IGNORING OUR REQUESTS.

[Andrew-dev]

It sounds like the recent update to automatically lower raised hands when participants stop speaking is causing some confusion and inconvenience, particularly during your stand-ups and stand-downs. This feature, though intended to streamline meetings, seems to misinterpret brief interjections as a completion of a person's turn, leading to the unintended lowering of hands. It would be helpful to share this feedback directly with the platform's support team or through their feedback channels. In the meantime, you might consider using an alternate method to track turn-taking until this feature can be adjusted or toggled off to better suit your meeting structure. keep yourself update on zoom down / outge reports.

[druekberg]

PEOPLE! Stop saying "Me too...blah blah blah." We're here looking for a solution, not a complainers club. Just "like" the OP and hope Zoom notices. 

[BrassRing]

So...you have a lot of luck controlling others on the internet? Move along, then...

[kve2xgdv5b]

This automation frequently lowers my hand when other people are talking and I lost my place in the queue.

[BrassRing]

At this point, ONE YEAR that we've been complaining about this "feature" which no one asked for nor needs, it's clear Zoom doesn't care...or they would have given us the option to disable.

Thanks, Zoom software team for your UNresponsiveness!!

[Fyodor]

Ditto to what everyone else here has said. Anything "automated" that removes control from the host/user should be optional. Please make this configurable for users (not just host) or get rid of it all together.