Hey Butter lovers!

We’ve been churning out new Butter features faster than we can tell you about them. Our big focus has been on giving you more flexibility as to how you want to plan and run your collaborative sessions.

Here’s everything we’ve released in the past month:

📺 Screensharing just got smoother

We've completely rebuilt screensharing on the desktop app from the ground up. Here's what's better now:

Move the dock: The screensharing dock is now moveable, so it'll never block your content. The new dock also shows the name of the window you're sharing and makes it easier to choose a new window.

See more faces: Resize the video gallery to see up to 20 people at a time while you screenshare. This makes it much easier to stay connected to your participants as you present. 

Pop out the agenda: See and control the full agenda from its own window while you're screensharing. You can pop out the Chat and Notes too! It's all there.

This smooth new experience is only available on desktop, so download Butter for Desktop if you haven't yet!

Here’s a tour from Jakob, our CEO:

For full details, check out the Screenshare page in our Handbook.

🖍 Annotations: draw on your screen

You can now draw on your screen while screensharing or presenting a PDF. Just click the 'Annotate screen' button to start drawing away! Here's some stuff to know about annotations: 

Magic erase: The annotations work like a pointer that disappears after five seconds after you stop drawing.

Choose who can annotate: Only facilitators can annotate by default, but you can toggle on access for everybody to draw together!

Choose your style: Change the stroke thickness and color to your liking.

This was one of our most-requested features, so give yourselves a pat on the back for making this one happen.

Here's another tour!

You can learn more about Annotation in the Butter Handbook.

👀 Switch between view modes

We now have three view modes that let you choose how the participant grid appears to everyone in your sessions:

Gallery view: The classic video grid that’s great for democratic discussions.

Spotlight mode: Need to put all the attention on someone’s video? Then Spotlight mode is what you're looking for! With Spotlight mode, you can enlarge the video of one or more participants and minimize the rest. It’s perfect for giving a presentation or hosting a Q&A.

Panel mode: Panel mode lets you highlight one or more speakers while displaying the rest of the participants as the audience.

What's that? Another video tour? Don't mind if we do!

Here are the details on the various view modes in Butter!

💪 The Agenda just got more powerful

We've made three major improvements to the agenda that will make your life as a facilitator a lot easier:

Auto-pilot: Set your agenda to automatically advance to the next section when the set duration runs out.

Pop out the agenda: Want your agenda open at all times? Pop it out into a separate window. You can still control the agenda and launch tools from the pop-out.

Preset view modes: Set the participant view mode (gallery, spotlight, or panel) for each block and it will automatically change to this view mode when you reach that block in the agenda.

⚡️ Resizable app window and Focus mode

We've long had requests to have more drag-and-drop control over the various window sizes within Butter. So we've given you just that!

Resize the app window: You can now resize most apps within Butter. Want to see more of the app? No problem! Want to see more participants? Done! Simply drag the handle to adjust the size to your preference.  

Activate Focus mode: It can work wonders to remove distractions. Enter Focus mode! When Focus mode is activated, everything other than you, your participants, and your tool will be hidden.

Here’s a tour of Focus mode from Jakob:

🌯 That’s a wrap

Fewsh! What a marathon. If you have any feedback about anything at all, just shoot us a message from inside Butter! 

If you want to stay up-to-date on Butter updates, events, and tips, I’d highly recommend you join the Butter Community. Anamaria, our Community Lead, always has something awesome cooking for facilitators. 🔥

Stay buttery my friends.

- Chris