Google Meet’s face touch-up filters come to desktop

Google Meet’s ‘subtle’ and ‘smoothing’ effects will smooth out your complexion and lighten under-eye circles.

Google Meet is rolling out filters you can use to “lightly” touch up your complexion before you head into a meeting. The company first launched the feature on mobile last year, but now it’s coming to Google Meet’s web app.

You can choose from two different filters: subtle and smoothing. While Google says the subtle filter applies “very light” complexion smoothing, under-eye lightening, and eye whitening, the smoothing filter makes all three effects slightly more noticeable.

Judging by the GIF provided by Google, it doesn’t look like either option dramatically changes your appearance like some of the filters you’ll find on Snapchat. Instead, it seems to apply much lighter effects that make it look like you’re not even using a filter. You can find the touch-up options by selecting the Apply visual effects setting in Meet and choosing Appearance. From there, you can toggle Portrait touch-up on or off and pick your preferred filter.

Google Meet is rolling out its portrait touch-up feature starting today, but it will only be available to paid users on the following plans: Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Teaching & Learning Upgrade. Google One and Google Workspace Individual subscribers will also get access to portrait touch-ups.

Google was a little late to the videoconferencing face filter game, as competitors like Zoom and Microsoft Teams already let you alter your appearance — and a lot more drastically, too.