What to do When the Zoom Status Bar Disappears

What to do When the Zoom Status Bar Disappears

Zoom was first launched in 2011 out of San Jose, California, as a platform that promises frictionless communication between groups of people. It didn’t matter if those groups were just a handful of people working on a project or an entire company’s worth of employees. The value added by using Zoom was set to be enormous. However, much of that promise wasn’t realized until the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 sent every business manager scrambling to find a way to stay in touch with employees. It didn’t take long before seemingly everyone knew what a Zoom meeting was, and the company itself was a household name.

With that in mind, we want to take a few moments today to present some information about a trick you can use while on Zoom. In particular, we want to show you what to do when the status bar on your Zoom screen disappears.

Disappearing Toolbar While in Screen Share Mode

It is often the case that people use Zoom as a presentation tool to provide helpful information to people within the organization that they are speaking with. Their goal is to pass along valuable information that can help the viewers with some aspects of the presentation. To do so, it is often necessary to use the screen-sharing tool directly built into Zoom.

This tool allows the presenter to show other meeting participants precisely what they are looking at on their screen at any given time. When they do this, they are making it easier for themselves to display information precisely how they see it so that employees can grasp the concepts that the presenter is attempting to share with them. However, it can be somewhat terrifying for presenters when sharing their screen, and the meeting control toolbar (typically located at the top of their screen) disappears.

What to do To Get the Toolbar Back

A myriad of meeting controls is all contained on the toolbar at the top of your screen when you are in screen share mode. Thus, you will want access to all those tools when you are working through exactly what you need to do to present your meeting the way you want to. If the toolbar disappears, this could be a challenge.

When the mouse has moved away from the toolbar, it will sometimes disappear temporarily as the meeting progresses. It may reappear when the mouse is rolled over the area where the toolbar had previously been. However, there are situations when the toolbar may not reappear even when one takes those actions. Fortunately, we have a couple of tips for you to keep the toolbar in place for you.

Within a Meeting

If you are already in a Zoom meeting when you notice that the toolbar has disappeared on you, it may be necessary to hit the “stop share” button to stop sharing your screen temporarily. This will open up the opportunity to select some other options that may be relevant to you. You can go down to the tab that reads “Share Video” and click on the small arrow icon to pull up a list of options. From those options, select “Video Settings”, then select the “General” tab. From there, click the checkbox next to the instruction that reads “Always show meeting controls.”

This will ensure that you always have your meeting controls shown at the top of the meeting, no matter what. You do not have to fear the toolbar disappearing on you ever again. It is the best way to ensure that your meetings are not interrupted by your inability to locate the toolbar you need.

An important note is that those who see your screen (aka the other meeting participants) will not see the toolbar. Therefore, you do not have to worry about it distracting them as you attempt to present.

Before a Meeting

Ideally, you will set up your toolbar settings to operate how you need them to before you ever get into a meeting in the first place. If you can set it up correctly, then you don’t have to stress about the toolbar disappearing on you in the middle of your meeting. To do this, you will want to follow these steps:

• Open the Zoom App 
• Go to the Settings Tab – This is represented by the classic spinning wheel icon typically used to represent settings across several programs.
• Select the “General” Tab – From the list of settings, you will want to select the general tab to pull up controls related to the toolbar
• Click the box next to “Always show meeting controls” – You can click on the box to show meeting controls so that the toolbar will not disappear when you are presenting.

It is better to turn this feature on before you ever launch your meeting in the first place. It will enable you not to fret about the possibility of stopping in the middle of your meeting to get your toolbar back. Even a quick pause like that can throw off the entire flow of your meeting and make it challenging to get back on track. Most people recognize that they would prefer to have these settings enabled before they get started simply.

Zoom may have been around for more than a decade at this point, but there is still a steep learning curve regarding some of this system’s ins and outs. Many people are just getting onto Zoom for the first time, and some of the more intricate details about the various features and functions it contains are new to them. If that is the position that you find yourself in, we ask you to contact us for the latest information about how it all works.