How to freeze your camera on Google Meet
Google Meet runs in the browser, which changes one thing: the camera list comes from the browser, not from Meet. Once your browser can see a virtual camera, Meet can too, and freezing works the same as in any desktop meeting app.
The short answer
Install FreezingCam, restart your browser so it picks up the new camera, then open the Meet settings gear and choose FreezingCam under Video › Camera. Press Freeze to hold your last frame.
How to freeze your camera on Google Meet (Mac)
- 1
Install FreezingCam
Download FreezingCam and move it to your Applications folder. It works on macOS 10.13 and newer.
- 2
Launch it once
Open FreezingCam so macOS registers the virtual camera. It sits in the menu bar, not the Dock.
- 3
Restart your browser
Quit Chrome, Safari, Edge or Firefox completely and reopen it. Browsers enumerate cameras at startup, so a running browser will not list a newly installed one.
- 4
Choose the camera in Meet
Join or start a meeting, click the three-dot menu, open Settings › Video, and select FreezingCam from the Camera dropdown.
- 5
Press Freeze
Freeze from the menu bar whenever you need to step away, and unfreeze when you are back.
Google Meet quirks worth knowing
- Restart the whole browser, not just the tab. Chrome in particular keeps its device list until every window is closed.
- The first time you select a virtual camera the browser may ask for camera permission again. Allow it or Meet shows a black tile.
- Meet remembers your camera choice per browser profile, so if you use separate work and personal profiles you need to set it in both.
- Turn off Meet visual effects and background blur while testing — they re-encode the frame and can make a freeze look artificial.
- Meet sometimes falls back to the default camera after a browser update. Re-select FreezingCam in Settings if that happens.
What about Windows?
Google Meet is browser-based, so a lot of people assume any freeze tool will work cross-platform. The virtual camera underneath is still OS-specific.
FreezingCam is macOS-only today and we would rather say so than waste your time. A Windows build is in development. Join the Windows waiting list and we will email you when it ships.
In the meantime, the closest free workaround on Windows is OBS Studio: add your webcam as a source, start the built-in Virtual Camera, then select “OBS Virtual Camera” in Google Meet. Pausing the source or switching to a still image gives you a frozen frame. It takes longer to set up and there is no one-click freeze, but it works.
Why not just turn the camera off?
You can, and sometimes that is the right call. But a tile going black mid-conversation is conspicuous in a way a still frame is not, and turning it back on draws everyone's attention a second time. A frozen frame keeps the rhythm of the call intact. That is the whole point.