Introducing Guest Mode: Attendees can now join Gatheround events without signing in by choosing to “Join as Guest.” This creates a temporary, anonymous account that allows full participation in the event, but guest users won’t receive recap emails and can’t create their own events or groups. To learn how to enable it, click here.

Raise Hand Feature: We've added a Raise Hand button to the main meeting room for all participants. When someone raises their hand, the room is notified, and they're brought to the stage in the order they raised it. Hosts can also lower hands from the "..." menu on any video card.

Full Screen Toggle for Screen Share & Embed Slides
Participants can now click a new full screen button (bottom-right corner of the activity card) to expand Screen Share videos and Embed Slides presentations. This makes shared content easier to view, especially on smaller screens.
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Keyboard Navigation for Embed Slides
You can now use your keyboard’s left and right arrow keys to navigate through slides in Embed Slides activities, making presentations smoother and more accessible.

Update to Hosting Permissions: We’ve updated event hosting permissions: only assigned hosts can now start games, manage recordings, mute participants, control stage activities, or play videos. Organizers and Gatheround Admins will now experience events as participants unless they assign themselves as hosts from the participant list.

Missing Gatheround Events: We resolved an issue where some event links showed an error until refreshed.

Improved Screen Share: Anyone with screen sharing permissions can now share during the Screen Share activity. Multiple participants can share within the same session as well. Great for team demos and collaborative presentations!

One activity at a time: We’ve simplified the meeting flow by removing the ability to stack or pin multiple activities. Now, starting a new activity will automatically stop the current one and remove its card from the stage. If you stop an activity early, its card disappears too, bringing the focus back to participant videos.
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Embed Slides
You can now import a deck directly from your Google Slides account and present it in Gatheround — no need to start a screen share! The following features are also supported:

AI-Powered Agenda Creation from Slides
Admins can now upload a Google Slides presentation and use AI to generate a draft agenda in Gatheround. You can choose a high, medium, or low interactivity level, and customize the result as needed.

Simplified Room Layout & Smarter Stage Sizing

We’ve removed the concept of multiple layouts. The room now always uses the side-by-side view. The stage automatically adjusts to your browser size, and YouTube videos, screen share, and presentations now expand to fill most of the space. Plus, the show/hide chat button is now always available, no matter the activity.

UI Improvements: More Space, Clearer Exits
We’ve made two updates to improve the main room experience:

Threaded Replies in Chat
You can now reply to specific messages in chat to start a thread! Replies stay grouped together so conversations stay organized.

Participants Can Now Share Their Screen
Participants can now start screen sharing — not just hosts! Hosts still have full control and can disable this option in the Host Controls panel.

Our new webinar mode puts the spotlight on facilitators and speakers. Learn more.

New event room updates to keep participants engaged:

AI summaries and transcripts. Track event outcomes, gather data, and create an easy-to-find record to keep all your participants on the same page. Learn more.

Improved accessibility features. Learn more about accessibility in Gatheround.

Simplified navigation to events and recaps. It’s now easier than ever to find all of your events in one place. Learn more.

In case you missed it: Gatheround is now part of Donut 🎉

Gatheround has a new look! We've updated your group's page to make it even easier to access past events and recaps. Read more about your group here.

Launched transcription to help participants catch up on anything they missed in a meeting! Once enabled, transcripts can be viewed in your event recap.

Participants can enable live closed captions when attending an event on Gatheround.

Introduced annual subscriptions to Gatheround Premium. You can purchase or update your subscription from our pricing page.

Increased Photo Booth activity duration to 20 seconds (more time to catch your smiles 😃).

Launched resources within your group page to help you get started on Gatheround, including an interactive tutorial event to walk you through how to navigate the event as a host on Gatheround.

Released a set of “How To” videos to support your agenda building and hosting experience.

All hosts/organizers/admins can now control the YouTube video (previously only the person who played it had control). Play, pause, and seek will be synced to all participants

Deployed optimizations to better handle screen sharing and improve call quality when a screenshare is in progress.

Added support for markdown in Flash Cards

Layout will now automatically switch to Presentation mode (previously called Fullscreen layout) when a Presentation activity is played or a screenshare is started.

Implemented an update to optimize call quality and improve transitions between main room, breakouts, and photobooth

Introducing our new Agenda Builder! Easily access our Activity Library to seamlessly add activities to your event.

Default volume for YouTube videos is now set to 50, previously 100, for both hosts and participants.

Released a Google Calendar integration to easily sync events to your Google Calendar.

Organizers now have the ability to duplicate individual activities and sections while building an agenda.

Participants will now be notified when a host pins a participant on stage

Hosts, organizers and admin who host multiple sessions using a single event link can now see each session listed by date on the recap page associated with that event link.

Hosts can share tab audio while screen sharing.

Note: only available in Chrome or Chromium-based browsers.

New filtering options are available in the Template Library.

Recordings in recap pages are now immediately playable!

Introduced customer stories on the website.