Hand Raise Management

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When participants want to speak — especially in speakers-only mode or during a structured Q&A — they raise their hand. As a moderator, you'll see these requests and can act on them.

Seeing Raised Hands

Raised hands appear in several places:

  • People list — participants with raised hands are highlighted and sorted by the time they raised their hand (earliest first)
  • Drop indicators — a visual indicator appears on the participant's video drop in the room view
  • Notification sound — a subtle notification plays when someone raises their hand (throttled to avoid spam during busy sessions)

Responding to Raised Hands

Granting Speaker Access

When you approve a raised hand, the participant receives a session grant that temporarily gives them speaking permissions. You can do this by:

  1. Right-clicking the participant's drop and selecting Make Speaker
  2. Right-clicking their entry in the People list and selecting Make Speaker

The participant's hand is automatically lowered when you grant them speaker access, and they can immediately unmute and speak.

Denying a Raised Hand

If you don't want to grant someone speaker access, you can simply lower their hand:

  • Right-click their entry in the People list and select Lower Hand

This dismisses their request without granting any permissions.

Lowering All Hands

To clear all raised hands at once (for example, after a Q&A segment), you can lower all hands from the People list's bulk actions.

How Session Grants Work with Hand Raises

When you grant speaker access from a raised hand, the participant receives an explicit session grant. This means:

  • They can unmute their microphone and enable their camera
  • The grant persists until you manually revoke it or they leave the session
  • It works regardless of speakers-only mode

For more details on session grants, see Session Grants.

Tips for Managing Hand Raises

  • First come, first served — raised hands are sorted chronologically, so you can work through them in order
  • Use speakers-only mode — hand raising is most useful when combined with speakers-only mode, where non-speakers must raise their hand to request speaking time
  • Set expectations — let participants know at the start of the session whether you'll be using hand raises and how you'll handle them
  • Cooldown period — after lowering their hand, a participant must wait a few seconds before raising it again, which prevents spam