Take a Walk on the Wild Side with Avatars

Video communication is a modern marvel, but creating those magical and spontaneous moments that make in-person interactions so special can be difficult in a virtual setting. Our teams at Zoom are always looking for ways to help you connect with others. That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest feature, Avatars!

This fun new feature makes it easy to inject fun into your virtual meetings and webinars and lighten the mood, whether you’re at home, in the office, or in the classroom! 

Available for Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars, Avatars replace your appearance with a virtual animal that mirrors your head movements and facial expressions. Avatars are an easy and entertaining way to engage with attendees and create a bit of fun. They also provide a good middle ground for users who don't want to appear on camera, but still want to express body language and facial expressions.

When you turn on the Avatars feature during a meeting, Zoom’s technology uses your device’s camera to detect where a face is on the screen and apply the selected avatar effect. Images of your face don’t leave your device when using this feature, and they are not stored or sent to Zoom. This feature does not use facial recognition, which means that it does not identify who you are. So while the Avatars feature can tell what is or is not a face, it does not recognize or distinguish between individual faces. Currently, we are only offering animal avatars at this time, but keep an eye out for updates to this feature and new avatars in the future! 

The Avatars feature is available on Windows and macOS desktop devices, as well as iOS mobile devices. To enable Avatars, you’ll need to make sure your Zoom desktop client or mobile app is running on version 5.10.0 or higher. You’ll also need the feature to be enabled by an account owner or admin.

Here’s how to enable and choose your avatar:

1. Ensure that your web camera is on and your video is enabled.
2. In the meeting toolbar, open your video options by selecting the 'Stop Video' menu.
3. Select the Choose Virtual Background or Choose Video Filter option.
4. Navigate to the Avatars tab and choose your avatar! 

To change your avatar, visit the Avatars tab and select a new one. To remove the filter, select 'None' in the Avatars tab. Users can also click 'Turn off avatar' from their self-view video tile in a meeting, as well as the 'Stop Video' menu in a meeting.

Here are just a few of the ways you can bring some fun into your meetings with avatars:

• Hybrid work - Delight your colleagues and bring some fun to your team-building meetings and events by dressing up as your favorite animal, or use an animal avatar when you’d like to take a break from appearing on camera during video meetings.
• Get in character for storytime - Create an atmosphere of wonder and engage your students during storytime in the classroom by taking on an animated appearance. 
• Bring science classes to life - Teaching a lesson on animals? Capture your students’ attention and bring new life to your lessons by becoming the animal(s) you’re covering that day.
• Make pediatric care less stressful - Discussing health and wellness with patients can be difficult, especially in a pediatric setting. Bring a smile to your patients’ faces and create a more relaxed environment by taking on the appearance of their favorite animal.
• Create memorable moments during virtual events - With animal avatars, it’s easy to create a special surprise for your webinar panelists and break the ice during virtual events. 

Avatars are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating fun moments for your meeting attendees! Here are just a few of the ways you can create more magical moments on Zoom: 

• Virtual Backgrounds - This feature allows you to display an image or video as your background during a Zoom meeting, which can provide you with more privacy or help create a dynamic meeting experience.
• Immersive scenes - With Zoom’s Immersive View, hosts can automatically or manually place participants into a virtual meeting scene of their choosing. You can even move participants around that scene and resize a participant’s image for a more natural experience.
• Filters - Grow unicorn horns, wear a pirate eye patch, or hang out on the slopes in aerospace goggles to level up your team calls, happy hours, or game nights using Filters for Zoom Meetings.
• Zoom Apps - Enrich your Zoom experience with the ability to access your favorite apps that cover many use cases — including whiteboarding, project management, note-taking, gaming, and more!

To learn more about the Zoom platform and how to use our latest features, please visit our Learning Center.