Zoom weirdness: icon on someone's face

February 26, 2024 7:18 AM

Had a family Zoom meeting yesterday between a computer and a phone, multiple people on each end. At one point, a "thumbs down" image (something like this but white) covered the face of one of the participants for about ten seconds. No one was clicking anything. We were unable to reproduce this phenomenon. Anyone got an explanation?

It obscured the face of my brother just as he was jokingly telling us to avoid a certain brand of noodles, but surely that's just a coincidence.

posted by mpark to Technology (9 answers total)

Best answer: If they are using a mac it could be this
posted by tomp at 7:22 AM on February 26 [10 favorites]

I also saw that randomly pop up in a meeting the other day, and I was using Teams, not Zoom. I agree it looks like the new Reactions feature in MacOS Sonoma.
posted by snarfois at 8:07 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Yes, that's a Mac thing. It is driven by hand gestures ... and is really embarrassing in work meetings (ask me how I know). When you are in an app that is using your camera (Zoom, Teams, etc), click on the blue camera icon on the tool bar at the very top of your screen. That will bring up a drop down menu where you can turn it off.
posted by mcduff at 8:27 AM on February 26 [11 favorites]

As a person who gesticulates wildly and uses a Mac, these new "features" are the bane of my existence. Thanks for the info on how to turn it off, mcduff!
posted by twelve cent archie at 8:51 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

I've had this plague me on my new work Mac and I'll be watching this thread closely because none of the instructions I've found (including the ones here) actually work to turn it off. So just wanted to let you know, if your Mac also doesn't have a blue or green camera icon to access these settings, you're not alone.
posted by biblioPHL at 9:33 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

It's _wild_ that you can't go in to settings and disable it unless the camera happens to be on. I used the Zoom video preferences to turn on the camera so that green camera showed in the menu bar, and then I _think_ I turned it off...
posted by advicepig at 10:22 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

Correction: the camera icon is green. I had misremembered.
posted by mcduff at 10:29 AM on February 26

For anyone reading this who struggled to find the green camera icon up top like I did, it doesn't show if you're using a docking station and monitors, apparently. I finally got it to show by disconnecting my Macbook from the dock, firing up a Zoom meeting, and turning my camera on. It didn't show even though I had the Macbook open and was using the Macbook's own camera, until I disconnected it entirely.
posted by biblioPHL at 10:53 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

Hmm, that's goofy. It shows on my desktops when using this Dell Thunderbolt dock as well as a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter.
posted by advicepig at 11:31 AM on February 26