When you’re in the middle of a Zoom video meeting at home and your cat suddenly decides to start bawling for its dinner, you’ll want to mute your audio in a hurry. In that case, you have a choice: you can either reach for your mouse or touchpad and start searching for the “Mute” button or you can use a quick keyboard shortcut to cut off that noise immediately.
Zoom has a long list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use before or during a videoconference. By using these shortcuts, you can quickly join a meeting; mute and unmute the audio; start, pause, and stop recording; switch views from Speaker (a large image of the person speaking) to Gallery (several equally sized images, no matter who is speaking); and perform a variety of other tasks.
You can easily find a list of those tasks, and the shortcuts that you can use, in your Zoom app:
Go to Zoom’s settings by clicking on the gear in the upper right-hand corner
In the left-hand menu, select “Keyboard Shortcuts”
Of course, the keys you press on a Mac or a Windows PC will be different, but no matter which platform you use, those shortcuts can be really useful when you’re on a laptop Zoom call.