What is Jitsi Meet and how does it work the best free open source alternative to Zoom and Google Meet | Technology Explica .co – Explica

A year ago, video calling tools became part of everyday life for many people. Few were spared having meetings with family, friends and co-workers, several in a single day. The advance of the pandemic and the containment measures have relaxed that situation, but they are still very much needed.

If we ask, everyone has their favorite tool, either because they already have the application installed, it is the one they use at work, because it allows them to record meetings, or because it offers more games and funds to have a good time. Google Meet, Microsoft Team, Skype or Zoom they are many and very similar, but Jitsi Meet has gone more unnoticed, despite having been available for years and offer a lot for free.

You never know, maybe after giving it a try you decide that this is your new platform for making video calls. We are going to tell you about its main functions, everything we can do with it completely free and the security measures it offers.

If you are away from your friends, family or co-workers, this is no excuse for not maintaining communication with them. Here are five apps that allow you to make group video calls to keep talking to those people.

This program is the brainchild of Emil Ivov, a student at the University of Strasbourg, who has evolved over the years. In 2015, the Australian company Atlassian bought its technology. Today Jipsi Meet has more than 20 million active users around the world.

It is a platform mainly free and open source so it gives users the ability to create new tools and functions to improve the system as needed. A freer project, with almost no limits of use for its users and that has a lot of personality. Here you have a gallery with several images for you to consult its design.

From your computers browser, this platform is very easy to use. You open the Jitsi Meet website and write the name of the room (the one you have invented or the one that has been passed to you). If the meeting already exists, you will instantly enter it, even if you have not been invited, and if not, you will create it automatically.

As surprising as it may seem, it is that simple, without names or email to identify us. Of course, the platform requires a series of permissions both on the phone and on the computer. Please read carefully and accept if you agree, these are very normal requests to use the camera and microphone.

Once inside we see a series of symbols that represent the main functions, we list them below:

Activate or deactivate the microphone so as not to disturb others Activate or deactivate the camera: It is possible to use an external camera or the mobile one to achieve a higher quality. Here we explain how to do it and we recommend some applications for it. Share screen: To share the screen, it gives us the option to share the full screen and all our movements, only a specific window or only the chrome tab that you choose, which is very practical to avoid revealing personal data by mistake. Open the chat section to send a message to all participants Raise your hand to ask to speak Organize the participant view as a grid Invite more participants Other functions that we show you below Hang up and log out Meeting name and Video quality (top of screen) Your profile and rotate image function (upper right corner): As in most platforms, the image is by default with mirror mode, that is, the program turns our image to see us as if we were looking into a mirror, our right is the left and vice versa. This is so because people are more used to seeing themselves reflected in the mirror and not how others see us.

These are all the options that are quickly available on the main screen. Within the three-point section there are more. For example, video conferences can be recorded and the video uploaded to your Dropbox account. We can also start a live broadcast on YouTube.

All participants are moderators. This democratic option is not frequent in other applications, Jitsi alleges that in the face-to-face meetings that were held before this pandemic there were no people with exclusive privileges that allowed them to silence the rest and the meetings were carried out with education on most occasions, which that should move to the digital realm.

The company ensures that it is better for all participants to be able to silence the rest, so that anyone can block the microphone of another participant who has not realized that it makes too much noise and makes communication difficult. However, since these respectful environments are not everywhere, Jitsi offers its code in Docker and create a more private configuration. This is one of the advantages of open source programs, although only for users with advanced computer skills.

Another interesting option is all the keyboard shortcuts that you can use to navigate the meeting more quickly. You have a list with everyone within the options. It is more practical if you have to be moderating the meeting or you are directing a live show.

It also allows you to blur the screen or include a different background such as views of a city or a mountain. It doesnt offer many funds, but it lets you upload it from your computer, so you can choose the one you like the most. Even so, the quality of the cut leaves to be desired (as in almost all) and depending on the situation it can be more confusing than practical.

It is necessary to download the application on our phone, either Android or iOS, to create a meeting. Once installed, its use is very simple, with almost no need to enter data to create a new meeting, just put a name and invite anyone through an email or by sharing the link. As we have already mentioned before, one of the advantages of this platform is that it does not have time limits or users, you can hold endless and massive meetings.

The functions are practically the same in a smaller screen format. Being able to silence, expel and prioritize any of the participants in the meeting. In the same way, we have an integration with Google Calendar to schedule work meetings and view a call history.

If we do not have the application downloaded, we have the possibility to send the link or the phone number for the other participants to join without any hassle through the browser or as a traditional voice call.

In calls, the video quality can be adjusted, this makes it easier not to saturate the device or the internet connection with an excessive workload. They can also be video or voice, if you do not have a WiFi network at hand this function prevents you from consuming all your mobile data at once. They also provide you with a personalized web address and phone number so that you can join the meeting without the need for a computer.

Video calls host all kinds of conversations that should be private, many companies expose business data that must be protected, so security in these applications is essential. Jitsi has strengths and weaknesses that are important for you to know.

Your meetings are private, created when the first participant enters and deleted when the last participant leaves. If someone rejoins the same room, a new meeting with the same name is created and there is no connection with any previous meeting that has been held with the same name, they explain in their use and privacy policy.

Jitsy does not require the creation of any personal account to use its services, so it is only necessary to indicate a name (it can be invented) to identify ourselves to the rest of the participants during the meeting. Data such as name or email address are, in principle, optional and the platform ensures that they are deleted after the video call ends.

Also other data such as conversations shared by chat or speaker statistics are deleted at the end. However, the recordings are first kept on the Jitsy servers and then saved in the Dropbox account that we have entered. If the system does not find space to upload the recording to your Dropbox, it will keep it for 24 hours and then delete it. That is why it is important to make sure that we have plenty of space in Dropbox so that the recording is stored correctly.

On the other hand, Jitsi Meet uses Google Analytics on its website. As they explain, they only use it to check which functions are most popular and the possible errors. Even so, the function can be disabled if you decide to be the server to enforce privacy with this code that other developers have created.

For greater security, video calling platforms have resorted to a protection system that we can also find in messaging applications such as WhatsApp or Signal, end-to-end encryption.

With this encryption, communication goes from the sender to the receiver encrypted, so that no one can decrypt it along the way. Jitsi offers this possibility, but it is necessary to activate it in the settings of the tool and make sure that all participants fill in the same password or phrase in the Password section.

It is also necessary to use a browser based on Chromium 83 and higher, that is, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Brave and Opera. You can also use Electron, which supports it out of the box.

In any case, it must be clear that this protection system tends to fail when video calls are recorded, the recordings remain on the Jitsi servers unencrypted and then uploaded to your Dropbox account, which can also be hacked.

Being an experimental class system it can give errors. During the tests that we have carried out, the image and sound have failed on more than one occasion when the end-to-end encryption is activated and a mobile phone with little power is being used.

All these aspects are very important, but perhaps its greatest weakness is in the meeting creation system, by indicating a name you are already in a meeting. So that strangers do not sneak in without any difficulty, the platform has a series of tips that you should follow:

Be careful of where do you share meeting information and how you invite the other participants. Posting the data on social networks can be a very high risk, even if you want to do a live on YouTube. Pick an unusual name For the meeting, Yoga, Coffee or Family Reunion, they are very common. The chances of random uninvited people joining are very, very high, they explain. You can use your random name generator. They are also working on an unsafe name detector to help users create them. Activate the waiting room in the security functions to check who wants to join your meeting and give them permission or not. Set a password for the meeting and share it with participants over a secure network. From the outset, you have already seen that all video calls are open to anyone who knows their name. Passwords enforce privacy and are reset when the meeting is closed.

This is Jitsi Meet, a video calling platform that gives you much more freedom than the main brands like Google or Zoom. It will take less than five minutes to get your design and how it works and if you dont like something you can always find the solution among the many versions that other developers have created thanks to its open source.

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What is Jitsi Meet and how does it work the best free open source alternative to Zoom and Google Meet | Technology Explica .co - Explica