It’s totally normal to feel a little anxiety before pressing that “join meeting” button on your latest video conference. Since the COVID-19 pandemic thrust us into the era of social distancing, a steady stream video chats starting with the same round robin game of “can everyone hear/see me ok?”

The feature is rolling out mostly in business and education accounts, but it’s coming to the rest of Meet users down the road. Once it’s enabled, you’ll see a “check your audio and video” button appear under the smaller preview you typically see before joining a meeting.

Clicking on it launches a much larger preview so you can get a clear look at what everyone else will see if they have you full-screen. That’s a good opportunity to check your background for empty snack packages or other possibly embarrassing items you may have left sitting in your camera’s view.

Underneath the preview, drop-down menus let people select the microphones, speakers and cameras they want to use during the meeting. If you’re on a laptop without headphones or external peripherals, this process might feel redundant, but once you add other devices to the mix, things can get more complicated.

For instance, it’s easy to buy a fancy microphone, only to realize that you don’t have it selected during your call so your co-callers miss out on your smooth voice. Or perhaps you get a new monitor to go with your computer and it has an audio feature that takes over for your built-in speakers and leaves you without sound, which requires real-time troubleshooting.

If something is wrong with your inputs or outputs, Meet will try to help you troubleshoot the problem before you join.(SD-Agencies)