How to Manage Participants in a Zoom Meeting

Last Updated: March 20, 2022

As the host in a meeting, you can manage the participants. By default, any participant in a meeting can share their video, screen, and audio, but you can change these settings during a meeting.

If you want to further limit who can share their screen, video, and audio, we recommend using the webinar platform. For a full comparison of these options, see our meeting and webinar comparison.

This article covers:

• Order of participants listed in a Zoom meeting
• Features available for managing participants as a host or co-host
• How to manage participants in a Zoom meeting

Prerequisites for managing participants in a Zoom meeting

• Host permissions in the meeting, or co-host permission (set by the host)
• Join by Zoom desktop client, mobile app, or web client*

Some options have additional prerequisites and must be enabled on the web portal or require a specific version of Zoom for full functionality. These features include giving a participant the ability to record locally, assigning a co-host, viewing the invitee status, putting a participant on-hold and using the waiting room.

*Limited controls are available when joining by web.

Order of participants listed in a Zoom meeting

Names in the Participants panel appear in the following order:

1. You
2. The host (If you’re not the host)
3. Phone numbers with no names 
4. Unmuted participants (sorted alphabetically)
5. Muted participants (sorted alphabetically)

Features available for managing participants as a host or co-host

With meetings, hosts and co-hosts can control the following features:

• Mute participants
• Request that a participant mutes or unmutes (with pre-approved consent)
• Stop a participant's video
• Request that a participant starts their video
• Prevent participants from screen sharing
• Rename a participant
• View a list of invitees' meeting statuses 
• Put a participant on hold (if waiting room is disabled)
• Choose to play an enter or exit chime
• Lock the meeting to prevent anyone new from joining
• Place participants in waiting room or admit/remove participants from the waiting room (waiting room can only be enabled by the host)

Only hosts have access to these features:

• Give a participant the ability to record locally 
• Make a participant host or co-host 
• Enable waiting room