Google Duo

Google Duo group calling sneak peek revealed, low light mode also in testing

Ben Schoon | Dec 31 2018 - 6:57 am PT

Google’s work in messaging services has resulted mostly in a lot of headaches, but one major success for the company has been its video calling app Duo. Now, we’re getting a first look at Google Duo group calls as well as a new low light mode.

In past teardowns of Google Duo, we’ve been able to spot both of these upcoming features. Bits of group calling first showed up in Google Duo all the way back in March with low light mode making its debut in November.

Today, though, Android Police has managed to get their hands on screenshots, presumably from an unreleased version of Duo, which show off what these new features look like.

Starting off with Google Duo group calling, it appears the feature will support up to 8 people at once (7 guests and yourself). An option to “Create a Group” allows users to select the participants and even name the group.

It appears that, once the call has started, new members cannot be added to the group. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know how Duo’s interface will handle several people at once, but we can see that in the bottom right corner there is a button to see the participants in the call.

It’s still largely unclear when this functionality will roll out publicly, but given how ready to go it looks and the fact that a successful group call was performed in testing, I’d say it’ll arrive sooner rather than later. A nice tidbit also revealed here is that users can call their Home devices. It’s unclear what the exact focus of that would be, but I’d wager it’ll work as a sort of intercom.

Also in testing is a new low light mode. Strings for this first popped up last month and in these screenshots, we get a brief first look. In a dark environment, Duo pops up a message prompting the user to turn on this mode. It claims to “automatically [adjust] your video in dark environments so others can see you better.” How it does that is unknown at the moment, but it’ll certainly be a welcome trick.