Blur what's behind you, or put a picture there instead. FaceOn finds you in each frame on your own device, so nobody ever receives your video without the effect, and nothing about it is sent anywhere.
Choose one before you join
On the screen before you join, select Backgrounds and effects on your preview. The meeting starts with your choice, and the preview says Background on while one is chosen.
Change it in a meeting
Select the arrow on the camera button, then Backgrounds and effects…. On a phone, it's in More. The panel shows your video as others see it, and a choice applies at once.
What you can choose
- No effect, Slight blur or Blur.
- Art: four public-domain paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Places: a library, a valley, Earth from space and a coastline, all public domain.
- Abstract: four soft gradients.
- Motion: an aurora, Earth from orbit, a lake, a waterfall, clouds and a sunrise: short looping videos from NASA, the U.S. National Park Service and photographers who gave them to the public domain. Each is a few megabytes, downloaded when you choose it, and the calmer ones use less data in a meeting. A browser that can't play their video doesn't show them.
- Yours: select Add to use your own image (JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, up to 10 MB) or a looping video (MP4 or WebM, up to 60 seconds and 50 MB). Images are cropped to 16:9. What you add stays in this browser and is never uploaded. Select × on one to remove it.
Your choice is kept on this device and used in every meeting. Settings, under Backgrounds and effects, sets it outside a meeting.
If your device can't keep up
Finding you in every frame takes some work. If your device can't keep up, FaceOn first does less of it, then turns effects off to keep your video smooth, and tells you. Choosing a background again tries once more.
Backgrounds and effects need a recent Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. Where a browser can't run them, the button doesn't appear.
Good to know
- Your video is mirrored to you if you like it that way (Settings, under Video), so text in a background reads backwards to you only. Everyone else sees it the right way round.
- The first time, your browser downloads what it needs to find you, a few megabytes, and then keeps it.
- For the cleanest edges, light your face and sit in front of something that stands out from your hair and clothes. FaceOn lines its outline up with what your camera sees, so a dark sweater in front of a dark wall blurs where they meet.