Gather helps you stay connected to your remote colleagues. If you’re not actively watching your virtual office, however, it’s easy to miss the spontaneous moments that make work great. 

To give you better visibility into your virtual office when you’re working in other windows, we’re releasing a brand new version of the desktop minimode!

Note: We're releasing this updated version of minimode progressively to users over the next few weeks. If you don't see it yet, stay tuned!

Minimode gives you a mini Gather window that lets you see activity near you in the office while you can stay focused on the task at hand. 

Designed to give you more chances to connect with your colleagues, the minimode is the first of a series of features we plan to launch that replicate the best of in-person work for remote teams. 

How it works

By default, the minimode is a small bubble on your desktop. You can freely move this around your screen or snap it to the left, right, or top edge for easy window management. 

There are two views you’ll experience with minimode: 

• Desk Mode for when you’re passively in your Gather office
• Video Mode for when you’re actively talking with your colleagues

Desk Mode

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When you hover over the minimode window, you’ll see the people around you (defined today by “7 tiles” of distance) along with their availability status. This makes it easy to know at a glance if they’re around to talk. 

When you click on a colleague from the minimode window, you can wave at them or have a back-and-forth chat conversation – all without having to fully open Gather. 

To make sure you never miss the chance to interact with someone new around you, we’ve added a few interactions to help you feel that sense of in-person presence. 

Whenever someone comes into your range (like when they come online in the morning or return from a meeting) an animation will play so you can see it in your peripheral view. A similar animation plays when someone switches to the Available status after being Busy or in Do Not Disturb mode. 

Lastly, we’ve made it super easy to keep your status up to date via the minimode. Just click on yourself and you can set your availability as Available, Busy, or Do Not Disturb or add a text status. 

Video Mode

In addition to passive presence when you’re working alone, we’ve focused on how to make the “on-video” experience smooth for quick collaboration and meetings.

When someone walks up to you and you connect with audio and video, your minimode will change to Video Mode. You’ll see slightly larger videos from your colleagues along with all the important collaboration features you need during a call like chat, screenshare, and emoting. 

You’ll even see reactions at the bottom of the minimode window, so you won’t miss out on the energy of how your coworkers are reacting to something. 

Try it!

We added a lot of love to the details, and would love for you to try the new minimode. If you’re already using the desktop app, you’ll automatically get the update. Otherwise, you can download the desktop app here. We look forward to your feedback, and stay tuned for more updates!