Don’t be satisfied with hosting a video conference For up to a million people, Zoom has now released its own version of Google Docs, so if you’re looking for another way to write on digital paper within your web browser, Zoom has you covered (Proton recently released something similar). do).
Zoom Tut The benefits of keeping all your work within a single workspace: Our own research shows that you can save hours a week by “limiting workflow interruptions,” assuming that means switching. Switch between Zoom video calls and Google Docs in your browser.
It may not be enough for seasoned Google Drive users to jump on board just yet, but if you already spend a lot of time in the Zoom ecosystem, Zoom Docs could be a more convenient alternative. If you’re curious about what the app has to offer, read on.
Basic Zoom Docs Features
If you have a free Zoom account, you can use all the basic features of Zoom Docs, but you can only share up to 10 documents at a time. For individual users, that’s probably fine. If you sign up for a paid plan that costs $14.99/month or more, the sharing limit is removed, and you also get access to an AI companion to help you write.
When you load the Zoom Docs interface in your browser, if you’ve used a tool like Notion before, you’ll feel right at home. Each document is a blank canvas for text and images. You can start typing right away. A variety of context menus and toolbars follow. When you highlight text, a formatting toolbar comes into view.
Markdown is supported, as are tables, lists, code, images, and other embeds. In general, it’s all very smooth. For example, if you paste a YouTube video URL, it will play right inside the document (if you want). In this way and in other ways, it’s more like a blog post writer, whereas Google Docs is more like a traditional Word alternative.
The interface is simple and straightforward, but if you dig deeper, you’ll find some useful features. You can instantly translate text right within your document, for example, you can roll back to a previous version of your document with just a few clicks, and it even includes basic spelling and grammar checking.
Speaking of features that Google Docs has that Zoom Docs doesn’t, Zoom currently doesn’t have a word count, which could be a problem for some writers. It also doesn’t have tools like document comparison, offline editing, or voice input. It also doesn’t have more traditional features like table of contents, headers, and footers.
As you edit, everything is saved instantly, and the main document list is simple and easy to use. Zoom Docs lets you set up your own template or choose from a variety of pre-built templates to get started faster, and there’s even an option to import and convert Word files (but not vice versa).
Advanced Zoom Docs Features
We’ve already mentioned the AI companion, and it’s as good as you’d expect: it summarizes text, rewrites it for you in a different tone, and even spits out some generic, artificial blocks of text based on prompts. If you’ve ever used tools like OpenAI ChatGPT or Google Gemini, all of this will feel familiar.
As you might expect, there’s some deep Zoom integration here. You can start or schedule meetings from within Docs, or conversely, you can summarize video meetings into text using AI-based transcription. You can also start a framework for reports, schedules, and more.
You can embed Zoom whiteboards directly into documents, create documents right within your Zoom meetings, and even embed very sophisticated tagging and notification features.
Collaboration is a key feature here. After all, it’s a Zoom product, so sharing, editing, commenting, and all the related tasks are handled well by the software. Up to 100 people can work on a single document, and you can manage viewing and editing permissions as needed. At the same time, it doesn’t feel cluttered or overly complicated.
As mentioned above, Zoom Docs is more of a wiki editor than a document editor in many ways, and the modular layout allows for a lot of flexibility. Get inspired by the included templates. The ease of linking documents and pages, and the interactive elements that come with tables make this software great for project planning and light spreadsheet work.
Google Docs has been around for decades and offers more features, especially when it comes to traditional word processors. But if you use Zoom a lot in your day-to-day work, Zoom Docs is a slick and useful addition that you might find useful, especially if you can take full advantage of its AI capabilities.