What's new in Cosmos Video

It's been a while — we've been quietly shipping. Cosmos now runs 3x lighter on your machine, the browser popout is rebuilt for the way you actually work, and your team can build a space that feels like theirs.

⚡ 3x lighter when you're not in a call

Keep Cosmos open all day without it eating into your browser or battery.

💡 Measured on a deliberately low-end $175 laptop (Intel Celeron N4500, 8GB RAM) — real-world kit, not a gaming rig.

🖥️ Browser popout, rebuilt for how you actually work

Pair, cowork, present — without losing team videos. When using Cosmos in Chrome, the experience used to drop the moment you switched tabs. Not anymore.

• Resizable, properly organised video — videos in a clean vertical stack, sized to fit your screen.
• Every control where you are — mic, camera, raised hand, home desk, and status. No tab-switching mid-conversation.
• Auto-starts on screenshare — present and keep your team in view. On dual monitors? Hover the screenshare button to disable, or pop it back in from the top-right.

🎨 Design a space that feels like yours

Everyone we talk to wants a Cosmos that looks like their own. Now your team can build one using our simple floor plan builder — no handholding required.

• Minimal or vibrant themes — clean and professional, or colourful and playful. Build either.
• Rooms that reflect your team — personal desks, meeting rooms, focus rooms, game rooms, and spatial areas. Name them after the people and projects that actually live there.
• Text and images in the space — team names, project labels, birthday shout-outs. Your choice of font, size, and colour.

How to use: Space dropdown › Floor Plan. Personalise via Space dropdown › Personalise Space.

A couple more things

• Double-click to move is back — if single-click has you jumping across the map by mistake, turn it on at User Preferences › Advanced › Navigation Options.
• Whiteboard and Cosmos Hours are retiring — both are underused and there are stronger dedicated tools for each. We're a small team, and focus matters.

We've shipped major updates based on your feedback. Cosmos now supports different room experiences beyond spatial areas and meeting rooms:

Personal Rooms — your own desk in Cosmos

• Claim any meeting room as yours (Bottom right > "Set Home")
• Spawn there automatically when joining
• One-click return from anywhere ("Home" button)

Coming soon: Access controls (walk-in/knock/do not disturb)

Focus Rooms — library-style silent co-working

• Cameras on, mics disabled
• Everyone shares their work status
• Perfect for accountability and deep work

To change room type: Click room card > Details > Select room type

Control Cosmos with keyboard

• CMD+K: Universal command bar — type any action
• /: View all keyboard shortcuts

User experience

• Each room type has its own toolbar designed for that specific experience
• All buttons now labelled — no mystery icons

Interactions

• Single click to move, and hover to see where you'll move
• Quick action cards for people and rooms
• Sidebar shows all active rooms

Imagine running a workshop where everyone's working on the same Miro board without screen sharing. That's exactly what you can do in Cosmos now.

🔗 Embed apps for seamless collaboration

Launch collaborative apps like Figma, Miro, Google Docs or any tool directly inside your call. Everyone sees and interacts with the same content in real-time — no more "can you see my screen?" moments.

• Launch apps with one click and they open for everyone instantly
• Co-edit documents, whiteboards and designs together in real-time
• Watch YouTube videos with perfectly synchronised playback
• Bookmark your most-used apps for instant access
• Set apps to auto-launch when anyone enters a room — perfect for onboarding videos or essential documents

To get started: Click the Apps icon in your toolbar, add any publicly accessible link, and select "Open for all".

🎤 AI noise cancellation

We've completely rebuilt our noise cancellation from the ground up. Your voice comes through with remarkable clarity whilst keyboard clicks, background chatter and ambient noise simply vanish.

Turn it on: Click the arrow next to your mic icon and toggle Active Noise Cancellation. Pro tip: for best quality with Bluetooth headphones, set your mic to laptop and speaker to headphones.

🎨 Custom video backgrounds

Stay professional on every call whilst keeping your privacy. Choose from our curated backgrounds or upload your own. Team admins can even share branded backgrounds across the workspace for polished client presentations.

Set it up: Go to User Preferences › Audio & Video › Upload your image. Choose whether to keep it personal or share with your entire space.

The moment you've all been waiting for has arrived! Starting breakouts during workshops, team sessions, and collaborative meetings has just got ridiculously easy in Cosmos.

Here's the magic:

1. Click Breakouts in your toolbar (visible for admins & members of space).
2. Set your group size and duration.
3. Hit Start and watch Cosmos do the rest.

No more herding participants into rooms. No more explaining how to navigate. No more coordination chaos. Cosmos automatically creates groups and whisks everyone off to the nearest available rooms.

Want more control? We've got you:

• Manual assignment: Handpick who goes where, or shuffle people mid-session
• Room selection: Choose exactly which meeting rooms to use
• Live announcements: Broadcast messages to specific groups or everyone at once
• One-click return: Instantly bring the entire group back to the main room

You can now easily run breakouts to spice up your workshops, meetings, and teaching sessions.

We're thrilled to announce the launch of the Cosmos Space Builder! We've heard countless requests from users wanting to create a space that feels like their home from the very start, and finally, we've been able to deliver it.

🌟 Create spaces that work for YOU

Cosmos spaces act as a glue for your sessions or workflows. Now you have complete control. Whether you're running team meetings, online co-working, hosting workshops, or delivering online lectures for students, you can now craft the right space for your needs.

🔧 To access the builder

1. Go to your Cosmos space
2. Click on "Floorplan" from the top left Space dropdown
3. Choose "Build your own space"

🎨 Bring your vision to life

The builder lets you edit one of the spaces from our library or design a space right from the start. You'll be able to build colourful spaces with all our preloaded assets.

📚 Getting started

• How to use the Space Builder — Learn the basics
• Creating the Perfect Space for Your Remote Team — Ideal for online co-working
• Creating the Perfect Cosmos Space for Your Students — Ideal for online learning or group tuition

💪 Build with confidence

• Publish spaces with 1-click: Changes apply instantly — nobody needs to refresh
• Simple interface: Easy to understand and use, no design experience required
• Make it your own: Reflect your personality and team culture through your space

Ready to create your own space? Do give Cosmos Space Builder a spin. We welcome your feedback — we'll quickly iterate and improve as we always do.

We've shipped a truckload of features to Cosmos that unlock new possibilities. Here's what's new.

👨‍🏫 Large meetings for all-hands & teaching

Run large sessions with crystal-clear audio, focused attention on speakers, and interactive audience engagement.

• Support for up to 200 participants with 30% less bandwidth usage thanks to VP9 encoding
• Noise cancellation to automatically remove background noise
• Active speaker mode to highlight whoever is speaking — perfect for webinars and podcasts
• Share a second camera during calls — ideal for music teachers showcasing instruments or product demonstrations
• Polls in meetings for real-time audience feedback
• Firefox improvements supporting up to 125 participants with annotations on screen-share
• Reactions are less jarring with options to turn off sounds (user settings > advanced)

🏢 Team collaboration

Get straight to work with minimal friction and improved messaging.

• Home — join your preferred desk instantly in listening mode and skip the space landing
• Threads section to see all active threads with updates and to carry the conversation
• Deep-linking notifications that take you directly to specific messages across all platforms
• See what's happening in the space when in Focusing or Away statuses

📊 Better insights for admins

Understand how your team uses Cosmos, and the value it creates.

• Space utilisation charts to understand peak usage times
• Value metrics to see what benefits Cosmos brings to your team
• Activity patterns to help identify optimal times for formal co-working sessions

Kicking off 2025 with improvements to make Cosmos video calls more powerful & intuitive.

🧭 Space & call switch

Two-tab view to simplify navigation, especially for first-time users.

• Space view: Navigate the space, create breakout groups, or return to your desk
• Call view: Focus on gallery view with enhanced pinning and spotlighting options

🌟 Spotlight mode

• Admins and members can now pin videos for everyone in calls
• Recordings follow spotlighted videos with improved layout & UX

📍 Home location

Set your preferred place in Cosmos as Home, whether it's a private room or a co-working desk. You can return to your place anytime by clicking the "Home" button in the space tab.

🛠️ Space Builder beta

Want early access to create fully custom spaces? Sign up for our beta and help us polish the space builder functionality before we release it to all users.

✨ Polish & improvements

• Google Calendar Add-On: Now re-verified on Google App Marketplace
• Game fixes: Resolved disconnection issues at game tables
• Call toolbar with apps open: Stays visible during games/apps
• Coming soon: Notification sounds and deep linking for apps/desktop

After a strong 2024, we're excited to continue enhancing Cosmos with your input. Here's to creating the best digital spaces for connecting, collaborating, and learning!

We're making Cosmos spaces more customisable and adding social features to help you connect with a bigger audience.

🔗 Memorable space links

• Memorable links work seamlessly on desktop, mobile, and apps.
• Get yours via Space Settings > Memorable Space Link for effortless sharing.

🪧 Change room names on the go

• Room cards with options to go to a room, get the shareable link for quick sharing, or edit settings.
• To change name, go to Cosmos space > click on room card > Edit & update name.
• Soon, you will be able to claim rooms, set room types, and embed links or music that auto-plays when someone joins.

🎥 Live stream calls from Cosmos

• Stream call recordings directly from Cosmos to platforms like YouTube or Twitch. Turn on livestream when starting a call recording in Cosmos, add your RTMP stream URL and password, and you're live.
• Streams mirror your recorder's layout and orientation.
• An update is coming to recorder design & layout.

✨ Polish & improvements

• Simplified navigation: Movement cues and clickable room names make it easier for first-time users to get around.
• Auto low-resource mode: Cosmos automatically alerts you if your device is struggling and switches to low resource mode. Turn it off via the View Control button in the top-right corner.

Cosmos is where people come together to work, learn, and connect. We're introducing features to make it easier to bring people together in a space and help them form new connections.

🌟 Profiles

Share your story, location, time zone and interests to find common ground with others in Cosmos space and form new connections.

🔗 Memorable space links

Give your Cosmos space a custom, easy-to-remember URL — cosmos.video/yourspace. You can get your memorable URL and control access via space > settings > space access.

📱 Improved mobile onboarding

Our mobile apps now support all Cosmos links, including member invites, room, user, call, and calendar invites. Just click, download, and go directly to the right Cosmos space or meeting.

🔒 Screen share auto-off for privacy

Set Cosmos to turn off screen sharing automatically when you leave a meeting room, are alone, or switch your status to focus or away. Adjust your preferences under user settings > advanced.

I'm back with updates, this time enhancing guests' ability to join meetings quickly and better chat on mobile, ensuring you and your team stay connected.

🔗 Guests can join meetings on mobile easily

• Guests can join meetings with a link: Easier to jump into discussions quickly. There is no need to sign up; download the Cosmos app, click the link, and go.
• Enhanced deep linking across Cosmos: Cosmos takes you where you need to be with a link in a snap — space, room, user, or meeting links.

💬 Chat improvements

• Notifications deep link: Jump to the message from any notification, saving you time and hassle.
• Thread replies in Direct Messages (DMs), Channels, and meeting chats with a refined user experience.
• Profile pictures sync seamlessly with mobile, web, and desktop chat, keeping chat personalised and engaging.

👯 Community feedback

• Slack notifications: Cosmos will no longer create message groups for notifications. Instead, you'll get all updates as direct messages from Cosmos, to reduce the clutter from multiple notifications.