Hosting and Role Privileges in Zoom
A guide to Host and Co-Host Rules and Privileges in Zoom Meetings.
Host/Co-Host Roles
Hosts are able to assign co-host roles to anyone in the meeting. Co-hosts can help manage the administrative side of the meeting, like managing participants and starting the recording.
Co-hosts cannot:
- Start the meeting
- Start closed captioning
- Start live-streaming
- End the meeting for all participants
- Make another participant a co-host
- Start breakout rooms or move participants to another breakout room
- Start waiting room (though they are able to add and remove participants from the waiting room)
Making someone a co-host:
- Click Participants in the control panel.
- Click More next to the participant's name.
- Click Make Co-Host.
If you would like to learn more about adding a co-host, check out the Enabling & Adding a Cohost page at the Zoom Help Center.
Host and Co-Host Controls:
-
- Mute/Unmute
- Audio Controls (Click the ^ next to Mute/Unmute): This lets you change the microphone and speaker that Zoom is using on your computer, leave computer audio, and access all audio options.
- Start/Stop Video
- Video Controls (Click the ^ next to Start/Stop Video): Select which camera Zoom should use, access the full video controls, and select a Virtual Background.
- Security: View and enable different security measures like locking the meeting, enabling/disabling screensharing, allowing participants to rename themselves, and other measures.
- Participants: View your list of meeting participants.
- Chat: View the chat.
- Share Screen: Share your screen.
- Record: Record the meeting.
- Live Transcript (only available to the host): Turns on the live transcript feature and allows participants to view captions.
- Breakout Rooms (only available to the host): Open and configure breakout rooms.
- Reactions: Choose reactions and emojis to share with participants.
- End Meeting (only available to the host): Ends the meeting for all.
- Polling (only available to the host): Create, edit, and launch polls. Note: depending on if you are using Mac or Windows, polling may show up in a different spot along the bottom bar.
- Mute/Unmute
Note: When you are screensharing, the controls will appear at the top of the screen and you can drag them to another location.
To learn more about Host and Co-Host controls explore the Host and Co-Host Controls page at the Zoom Help Center.
Described in the table below are the privileges that different types of Zoom users have in a meeting.
Roles | Share Screen | Request/Receive Remote Control | Start Polling | Designtate a Co-Host | Set Up Polling | Start/End Breakout Rooms | Start/End Recording | End a Meeting |
Meeting owner | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
Alternative host | X | X | X | X | ||||
Host who is not the meeting owner or alternative host | X | X | X | |||||
Co-host | X | X | ||||||
Participant | X | X |