Using a video as a Google Meet background

Warning This is not officially supported by Google, and could be considered against their terms of service (specifically “System interference”) so follow this guide at your own risk.

I accept no responsibility for how anyone chooses to use this. As always - Don’t be a pain

Don’t worry, at this time (2024-03-22) it only uses the video, not the audio channel.

Requirements

• An mp4 video which you have the rights to use
• A browser where you can edit a page’s HTML
• Some patience

Guide

• Join a Google Meet call
• click the menu (three vertical dots)
• select Apply visual effects
• Use inspector on the Add your own personal background button
• You should then see something like <input type="file" jsname="tif8Pe" jsaction="change:E7zRc" accept="image/jpeg, image/png, image/webp" style="display: none;"> in the HTML
  • edit this to include video/mp4
• Click the Add your own personal background button
• Select your mp4 video

Congratulations, you’ve now set a video as your background. The video audio is not sent

Dirty javascript hacks to do this

** Warning ** This is GPT generated, run at your own risk

// Find the first <input> element with the specific attributes
const inputFile = document.querySelector('input[type="file"][accept*="image/jpeg"], input[type="file"][accept*="image/png"], input[type="file"][accept*="image/webp"]');

if (inputFile) {
    // Get the current accept attribute value
    const currentAcceptValue = inputFile.getAttribute('accept');
    // Check if "video/mp4" is already included, if not, add it
    if (!currentAcceptValue.includes('video/mp4')) {
        inputFile.setAttribute('accept', `${currentAcceptValue}, video/mp4`);
    }
}

Steps to using this javascript

• Join a Google Meet call
• Open the developer console
• paste in that javascript and run it
• Click the Add your own personal background button
• Select your mp4 video

Congratulations, you’ve now set a video as your background The video audio is not sent