Automatically open Voice Room video in full screen on join
Yuri Vieira
Users frequently join Voice Rooms and think nothing is happening.
The video is either hidden or reduced to a small, easy-to-miss preview, depending on where they join from.
Currently, the Voice Room video only appears as a small preview in the top-right corner—and only if the user is already on a channel page. If they join from an Events page, a Course, or a Resource, no video appears at all.
This creates a confusing and unintuitive flow: users must be on desktop, navigate to a channel, notice the small preview, and manually expand it. This friction leads to frustration and significantly reduces Voice Room adoption.
We actively promote community-led Voice Rooms to keep conversations inside the platform (instead of external tools like Zoom), but the current experience makes participation harder than it should be.
We’re also seeing inconsistent behavior across browsers, with Chrome displaying more video feeds than Safari.
Requested improvements:
- Automatically surface the Voice Room video regardless of where the user joins from
- Open the Voice Room in full screen by default
- Improve cross-browser consistency, especially on Safari
These changes would make Voice Rooms easier to understand, easier to join, and far more engaging for communities.
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Sally B
I reported this as a bug (design flaw) that was introduced when Heartbeat did the big UI changes to desktop last year. They shrank the right side menu and moved the small video box from there (where it was visible from every page) to a floating panel only visible when on a channel that is scrolled to the top.
However I don't think making the video full screen by default is the best solution. What is needed is a small box that is visible on every position on every page as it was before. This would mean that we would regain the lost functionality of being able to see the video while browsing other parts of Heartbeat (so useful if the conversation is about a document or older thread).
Yuri Vieira
Hi Sally B ! Thank you for your feedback. I didn’t realize it worked differently in the past. Since I joined Heartbeat last year, we’ve been facing the same issue.
The option to keep the video in a corner is actually useful when you want to keep doing other things in the community. The problem is that it’s not intuitive: people don’t immediately realize the video is there, or that they need to expand it to see the others.
By automatically expanding the video when a user joins the call, there’s no ambiguity about whether they’re in or out. After that, they can always minimize the window and continue doing their own thing if they want.
Sally B
Previously having the video appear at the top of this member list in the right hand panel, with a clear way to expand it, was actually very obvious and easy to use. The current version, where users have to play 'hunt the video', is not good at all.
A
Aliyah
Yes please fix this. My group, including me, is always having this issue. Thanks so much!!