8 Best Ways to Fix Google Meet Not Allowed to Join Meetings

Google Meet was released partly in response to the global pandemic that has forced everyone inside, and partly in response to Zoom’s growing success. The service is new and quite reliable. Still, there are times when users are not allowed to join meetings on Google Meet, while others have reported that Google Meet failed when trying to join a meeting.

There are two situations here. The first is where Google Meet won’t let you join a meeting, which means the error is on your end. In the second case, Google Meet will not join the meeting even after clicking Join multiple times, which means something is wrong.

Let’s start.

1. Google Meet limitations

The free version of Google Meet allows up to 100 participants. All participants must have and sign in to a Google account (workspace or standard Gmail account). Upon registration, participants who are not signed in to a Google Account will be moved to a waiting room where they will “ask” the host to allow them to join the meeting.

The participant will only be able to join after the host approves the request and not otherwise. You might find this boring, but Google added it for security reasons so unwanted users can’t bombard your meetings and ruin your day. The video call time limit for free Google Account users is 60 minutes.

2. Google Meet requirements

You don’t need a Google Chrome browser to use Meet, but Google recommends it anyway. However, you must meet certain other conditions before joining a meeting. There are also some system (hardware) requirements that you should check and verify that your system meets them.

3. Google Workspace and meeting link format

You need a Google Workspace account (formerly G Suite) to join a meeting hosted on a Workspace account. Users or participants outside of your organization can be invited to join the meeting, but only through a link.

Did you receive a link to join a meeting? What type of link is it?

• meet.google.com/alphanumeric-code
• meet.google.com/lookup/random
• g.co/meet/nickname

The first meeting link is for people outside of the workspace domain, while the other two will depend on the attendee signing in to a Google Account on the same domain. What type of Google account do you have?

4. Enter the correct meeting code

The safest way to join a Google Meet meeting is to click on a shared link. You could make spelling mistakes when entering the code. Of course, the easiest way is to copy and paste the code, especially if it’s on a different device than the one you’re using to join the meeting. Note that hyphens are not necessary but make the code easier to read.

5. Different device

Some students using a Chromebook found that they couldn’t join a Google Meet session using their school-issued Google accounts. Perhaps the school authorities have imposed restrictions at the administrative level. This may be true if your team uses the Google Workspace account for Meet calls. I recommend that you try your personal or additional Google account on another device. It could be your personal smartphone, for example.

One indication of this is when you get the “You are not authorized to join this meeting” error.

6. Account permissions

Your Google Account may not have received the necessary permissions to join the meeting. Again, this can also be true for workplaces. You’ll need to ask your administrator to make sure your computer and Google ID are whitelisted before you can join Google Meet meetings. Otherwise, you will get an error saying that you cannot join the meeting or that Google Meet is not authorized to join the meeting. One way to test this theory to try to join another meeting. Can you do it?

7. Withdrawn / excluded from the meeting

Well, as much as you would avoid accepting it, that could be a possible reason. The host can remove (or exclude) participants from a meeting if needed, and when you try to join again, you’ll get an error. While we can’t comment on what happened, we do suggest that you contact the host using other means like Slack or WhatsApp.

Google notes that if a participant is twice refused to join a meeting, they will be blocked and will no longer be able to “knock”. And if the attendee is kicked out, he / she can’t even knock or join the meeting.

8. Clear the cache

We’ve already covered how changing the device you use to sign in can help resolve the Google Meet sign in banned error. If you don’t have access to another device, try clearing browser cache if you are using Chrome / Chromium browser and app cache if you are using Android app.

Let’s meet

Google has done a commendable job of keeping Meet easy and simple to use, or they just took inspiration from Zoom. Either way, Meet is a solid app and quickly integrated with other Google apps like Gmail. Deep integration with other Google apps opens up a host of possibilities and shows Google’s commitment and plans for the app. The sooner we get to know it, the better it will be for us users.

Now that you know how to resolve these errors, you can join meetings and help others as well. You can always be online a little early before the meeting to have time to figure things out if something goes wrong.