Not content with hosting video conferences Zoom has now launched its own version of Google Docs for as many as 1 million people. So if you’re looking for another way to write down text on digital paper within your web browser, Zoom has you covered (Proton recently launched a similar product, also).
Zoom tout The benefits of putting everything you do in one workspace: According to its own research, you can save hours a week by “limiting workflow distractions,” which we think means switching Between Zoom video calls and Google Docs in the browser.
While there may not be enough here to make seasoned Google Drive users jump ship (yet?), if you’ve spent a lot of time in the Zoom ecosystem, you may find Zoom Docs to be a more convenient option. If you’re curious about what this app has to offer, read on to learn more.
Basic functions of Zoom files
If you have a free Zoom account, you can use all the basic features within Zoom Docs, but you’re limited to sharing up to 10 files at a time – which may be fine for individual users. If you’re on a paid plan ($14.99+ per month), the sharing limit disappears, and you also have access to an AI companion that can assist you with your writing.
Load the Zoom Docs interface in your browser and you’ll feel right at home if you’ve used a tool like Notion before. Each file is a blank canvas containing text and images; you can start typing immediately. Various contextual menus and toolbars will follow you. Highlight the text and you’ll see the formatting toolbar jump into view.
Supports Markdown, as well as tables, lists, code, images, and other embeds. Generally speaking, it’s all very smooth: paste a YouTube video URL, for example, and play it in a file if you want. In this and other ways, it’s more of a blog post creator, while Google Docs is more of a traditional Word alternative.
Although the interface is simple and straightforward, there are some useful features if you dig deeper: you can translate text on the fly in a document; for example, you can roll back to a previous version of a document with just a few clicks, and basic Spelling and grammar check.
As for features that Google Docs has but Zoom Docs doesn’t, Zoom currently doesn’t have a word count feature, which may be a problem for some writers. You’ll also miss out on tools like file comparison, offline editing, and voice input. Also missing are more general features, such as support for table of contents, headers, and footers.
Everything is saved instantly as you edit, and the main file list is simple and easy to use. Zoom Docs lets you set up your own templates or choose from a variety of pre-built templates to help you get started faster, and there’s also the option to import and convert Word files (although you can’t convert in the other direction them)).
Advanced features for Zoom documents
We’ve already mentioned the AI companion, and it works as well as you’d expect. It will summarize the text, rewrite it for you in a different tone, and even generate some generic blocks of artificial text based on prompts. This will all look familiar if you’ve used tools like OpenAI ChatGPT or Google Gemini.
As you’d expect, there’s some tight Zoom integration here. You can start or schedule a meeting from a document, on the other hand, your video meeting can be summarized in text form with AI-driven transcription. It will also help you get started with frameworks for reports, agendas, and more.
You can embed Zoom whiteboards directly into documents, create documents from within Zoom meetings, and there are fairly sophisticated markup and notification features built in.
Collaboration is the key feature here – this is a Zoom product after all – sharing files, making changes, leaving comments and all related tasks are handled well by the software. Up to a hundred people can work on a document, and you can manage viewing and editing permissions as needed. At the same time, it never feels cluttered or too busy.
As mentioned above, Zoom Docs is in many ways more like a wiki editor than a document editor, and the modular layouts you can put together give you a lot of room for flexibility – check out the included templates to Get some inspiration. Documents and pages can be easily linked together, and the interactive elements gained through tables make the software also suitable for project planning and light spreadsheet work.
Google Docs has been around for decades and offers many more features, especially those associated with more traditional word processing programs. But if you use Zoom for a lot of your day-to-day work, Zoom Docs is a flexible and useful add-on that you might find useful, especially if you can take full advantage of its AI capabilities.
