[Poll results out] Should Google Meet add an option to allow sorting participants by their last names?

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on February 26, 2021) follows:

Google Meet has sorted participants by the order of their first names since the very beginning. While this may be the aptest way, it may cause a hard time for users in certain regions.

Many users have been demanding the addition of an option to Google Meet that will allow the host to sort names in their desired way – either by first or last name.

How do you sort participants by last/first name? They are default set to first/last. Looked for settings options to sort and unable to find any or see any options for this.
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I would love to see the ability to sort google meet attendees by last name and to also have the names on there always! Would make keeping track of students easier!
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However, these requests have gone unheeded by Google even with their sheer numbers. The search giant for some reason is seemingly intent on forcing users to sort by the first name.

This has been the cause of bother for many, especially in cases that require roll calls and attendance to be taken. Without names in the desired order, teachers can have a really hard time taking attendance.

After all, online teaching may involve the inclusion of up to a hundred students, or in other words, Google Meet’s maximum participant capacity.

Of course, it wouldn’t really cost Google too much to implement a feature as basic as this. And had they actually wanted to, they would’ve done so a long time ago.

Nonetheless, there was a workaround for this issue that was pretty widely used. It came in the form of a Chrome extension that allowed users to view all participants at a time while giving a presentation.

Google by default reduced the maximum number of participants displayed at a time during presentations significantly. The plugin hence proved to be pretty useful. However, with some update to Google Meet, this useful Chrome extension stopped working.

If you still want to try your luck, then you can download the Google Meet Grid View through this link. Note that you will also need to install the new Google Meet Grid View (fix) in order for it to work.

The extension comes with an option to sort participants in order of their last name on Google Meet and is hence definitely worth a shot.

That said, the big question is whether you are satisfied with the current state of the video conferencing service? Or do you desire an option to sort participants according to your liking or perhaps even improvements with regards to third-party extension support?

You can either drop a comment in the section at the end of this article, cast your vote on the Twitter poll below, or do both, as per your convenience.

NOTE: This article will be updated after one week with the poll results.

As promised, we do have the poll results. Not the turn out we expected, but either way, the results suggest most of our Meet readers don’t really care how the names appear, with 33.3% rooting for it.

The rest are happy with the current state of things. Of course, you can continue the conversation via the comments section below.

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