We are all working to practice safe social distancing. At the same time, we are finding the need to keep in touch regularly with friends or family who live far away. Even for work, companies are feeling the need to communicate with employees on a daily basis. One of those channels, of course, is video calling. Some of the apps that we probably never used on our phones before or computers are proving to be quite useful right about now.

Well, Google Duo might just have proven to be more essential with its latest upgrade. The app has now expanded its group calling capabilities to allow up to 12 people into a single group call. Google Duo has gained a lot of popularity across Android and iOS since last year when it picked up the ability to group call. Unfortunately, one was only limited to have a group call of up to 4 people and the number has been growing since.

The company’s senior director of product & design, Sanaz Ahari, made the announcement on Twitter just a few hours ago. Thankfully, this is a server-side rollout, so you don’t need to manually update the app on your phone to enable this new functionality. 

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We are grateful that Duo is helping users see their loved ones all around the world. We recognize group calling is particularly critical right now. We have increased group calling from 8 participants to 12 effective today. More to come. #AllInThisTogether #COVID19

— Sanaz (@sanazahari) March 27, 2020

In the midst of COVID-19 crisis, such apps among more like Zoom have surely seen a spike in daily active users. So, it just seems reasonable why Google would see the need to upgrade it now.

But it is only a matter of time before some of Google Duo’s competitors get the urge to step up their game as well.