What's new in Cosmos Video

We hope you're making the most out of Cosmos. We're back with updates that make Cosmos accommodating for all teams — big or small, creative or corporate. Let's dive into what's new and improved.

🧑‍🎨 Choose your avatar style based on your needs

• Picture bubbles: For those who prefer simplicity, users can now upload profile pictures, making team recognition smoother and faster.
• Avatars: Add a splash of fun by animating and customising your avatar, making every walk through Cosmos space engaging.

🤳 Mobile app enhancements for people on the go

• Invite links: Meeting, room, user, or space invite links work seamlessly on mobile. We've added redundancy to ensure users get to the reception if any invite link breaks.
• Simpler guest access: We want external guests to join on mobile without signups. This is in development and will be released next week.

💭 Meeting chat is now available on mobile: Participants from the mobile can ask questions and share updates, documents, and insights, enriching interactions.

⏩ Cosmos Replays now work on mobile browsers: Anyone can catch up on meetings conveniently on mobile — no app download or login is required. This truly enhances accessibility for Cosmos Replay viewers.

New updates are here, 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.

We have some exciting news for you — a slicker chat experience on desktop and fewer steps to enter Cosmos, making it the best app for video calls.

🗨️ Revamped desktop chat

Desktop chat just got a makeover. Here's what's new and improved.

• Fresh interface: A new interface on the web that's intuitive and user-friendly.
• Enhanced formatting: Make your messages more readable with formatting options like bold, italics, strikethrough and code.
• Seamless sharing: Share attachments effortlessly to keep the conversation flowing.
• Pinning: Ability to pin important messages on channels and DMs.
• Express yourself: Sprinkle personality into your messages with emojis.
• Threads: Improved threading experience for deeper discussions.

🚀 Performance boost: Under-the-hood improvements to reduce load times, smoother panning, and seamless zooming. Also, snowball throwing is fixed. If you don't know what I'm referring to, enter Cosmos and press "T" to try and throw one at your colleague.

🎤 Hassle-free joining: Users can enter Cosmos space without giving permission to a mic or camera. They see the permission prompts when they unmute the mic or camera.

🛠️ Cosmos recovers if Chrome auto-kills the tab: Stay connected with your colleagues easily.

🎥 Cosmos recording: The recorder bot wasn't starting recording immediately; we've shipped a fix today.

We at Cosmos want to help teams to be connected. We do this by lowering the effort it takes to start a conversation. We've shipped new features that make it easier to be available, pick the right moment and start a conversation.

🌟 Easier to be available

Improved popout experience to ensure Cosmos gets out of the way and lets you be productive. It gives you control for peace of mind:

• Quick access to buttons for mic and camera, status, and screenshare
• Floating videos with the ability to switch between pages
• Sound notification when someone walks up to you

🔍 Pick the right moment

• Spot available teammates in the sidebar or on the map
• Understand their context from true status
• If one of your teammates is busy, you can ask Cosmos to notify you when they become available

💬 Start conversations effortlessly

• Walk up to your teammate to start talking
• Or use "Are you free for a chat?" to ask if now is a good time

The new popout experience is available in the Cosmos desktop app.

🎥 Record meetings in rooms

Record meetings and keep them private or share them with your teammates. To view a recording, head to the video inbox in the left sidebar of your Cosmos venue.

📷 Background blur

You can now blur your background from the Audio & Video tab in Settings and keep your surroundings private.

Everyone in a conversation can now annotate a screen which is being shared.

📺 For the person sharing the screen

You need to use the Cosmos desktop app and share your entire screen.

✏️ To annotate

Click your mouse/touchpad and drag/swipe. You can choose to be on the Chrome browser or the Cosmos desktop app. We currently don't support the annotations feature on mobile.

🪄 Dynamic screen-share quality

Cosmos prioritises screen-share and audio over video in a situation with limited bandwidth.

📶 Ability to handle slow internet speed and reduce CPU usage

We adjust video quality based on the bandwidth available to upload and download. We also show the quality of each participant's connection on the video tile.

🌏 Low latency when connecting to people in different parts of the world

Cosmos now has globally distributed servers, and users connect to the closest Cosmos server based on location. Example: if two people are talking, one in India and the other in the UK, they will connect to the closest Cosmos servers based on their location. Our users get the best video quality regardless of their location.

📱 New mobile app

Please update your Cosmos Video mobile app to the latest version. Older versions of the app will no longer work. Also, we have resolved the following bugs on the apps:

• Screen-share can now be zoomed in and out
• Bluetooth headphones now work
• The phone remains awake while you are on the video call

Download the apps here

Direct messages

Now you can send a message to your colleagues directly within Cosmos. Just click on your Cosmos colleague's name in the sidebar on the left.

Channels

We have introduced Channels — dedicated spaces for your text conversations. Channels can bring clarity and organisation to your communication; you can create them for any project, topic or team. With all the information in one place, you can share ideas, make decisions and move forward.

You can create a new channel by clicking +New in the Channels section in the sidebar.

Introducing Cosmos integration with Google Calendar.

Meeting organisers

Can easily schedule a meeting in Cosmos from Google Calendar. Set up Cosmos as the default video-calling option for all meetings.

Users in Cosmos office

All the meetings scheduled for the day show up in the sidebar. You can press "Start" and select which room the meeting should start in.

Joining the meeting using a calendar link

Users using the link will come to the same meeting room selected by the person inside the office. If no one is in the office, a room will be allocated randomly for the meeting.

How to set it up

You can install it from the Google Calendar tab in the ⚙️ Settings of your Cosmos office, or use the link below.

Install Cosmos for Google Calendar · Change default office for Google Calendar

🐶 Adopt an office pet

Have an adorable puppy, kitten, or penguin follow you around and show you 🧡

You can also pet or shoo your pet by clicking on them.

What would you want your pets to do for you?

Some customers want them to answer questions from the company wiki, and some users want their pets to give them life advice.

Please share your thoughts on our community feedback board.