Clarification on Full UI Customization Capability in Zoom Meeting SDK (Web v4.0.7)

Video SDK UI ToolKit
1

Hello Zoom Developer Support Team,

We are integrating the Zoom Meeting SDK for Web (v4.0.7) in a Next.js (v14) React application. We are currently evaluating the feasibility of implementing a fully custom meeting UI using both:

  1. Client View

  2. Component View

After inspecting the exposed SDK client methods, we see only the following available methods (67 total), including: init, join, mute, stopAudio, updateVideoOptions, leaveMeeting, setViewType, etc.

However, we do not see explicit APIs such as:

 1. startVideo()

 2. stopVideo()

 3. startAudio()

updateVideoOptions() appears to configure video layout/settings but does not actually control camera state.

Our Customization Requirements :

We would like clarification on whether the following are officially supported in the Web Meeting SDK:

                1. Full UI refactor with completely custom layout

                2. Custom mute / unmute button with full programmatic control

                3. Custom start / stop video button

                4. Custom speaker control UI

                5. Custom camera PTZ control icons

                6. Custom reactions UI and custom positioning

                7. Custom placement of Leave button

                8. Complete replacement of Zoom chat interface with custom message UI

Key Question

Is it technically possible to:

   1. Hide all default Zoom UI controls

   2. Build our own custom UI

   3. Fully control audio/video state programmatically using SDK APIs

   4. Or is the Web Meeting SDK limited in this regard?

If full UI customization is not supported, could you please clarify:

What level of UI customization is officially supported?

Whether deeper media control APIs are available under Component View?

If there is any recommended approach for complete UI control?

Thank you for your clarification.

2

Hi @AboveCloud9 The out of box web meeting sdk is intended for quick embedded development and deployment of Zoom Meetings in the browser. Because of this, the actual UI customizability is very limited. There are options such as adding buttons in the component view and hacky ways I’ve seen where you alter UI by modifying the underlying css, however support for that from my team is limited.

The Video SDK is our fully customizable offering where you have complete control over the UI. We have many sample apps of different use cases you can reference on our GitHub as well as the open sourced UIToolkit which is a prebuilt video sdk solution to get you started quickly.

3

Thank you for the clarification regarding the limitations of the Web Meeting SDK customization.

I would like to confirm one specific point:

Is there any Zoom subscription plan, enterprise plan, or additional licensing that enables deeper/full UI customization capabilities in the Web Meeting SDK?

Specifically, is it possible under any subscription tier to:

  • hide all default Zoom controls,

  • build a completely custom UI,

  • and fully control audio/video actions programmatically?

Or are these limitations architectural, meaning full UI customization is only officially supported through the Video SDK regardless of subscription level?

Thank you. @ticorrian.heard

4

Hi @AboveCloud9 Customization is limited in the Web Meeting SDK on the architecture level. It is primarily a plug and play embedded Zoom experience similar to our web client offering. However, there is a custom UI mode with our native web sdks. For full customization on the web, the Video SDK would best suit your needs here.

5

Hi @ticorrian.heard ,

Just wanted to clarify — the “Custom UI” mode mentioned in the documentation/examples seems to be primarily for the Android/iOS SDKs.

We are currently using the Zoom Meeting SDK for Web (v4.0.7), so we wanted to understand whether full UI customization is supported on the Web SDK as well with any specific subscription/plan, or whether the Web SDK is limited to the default embedded UI components.

If customization is supported on Web:

  • Can we fully customize the meeting screen layout and controls?

  • Or is this level of customization only available through the Video SDK?

Also, if the Video SDK is the recommended approach for achieving full UI customization:

  • Is it possible to support scheduled meetings similar to Zoom Meetings?

  • Are in-meeting messaging/chat features available?

  • Are reactions/emojis supported in the Video SDK?

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

6

Happy to clarify! The custom UI mode mentioned above is only for native/mobile SDKs. The Web Meeting SDK does not have the custom UI option aside from adding buttons and custom positioning with the component view. If you would like to have full control over the SDK UI customization, you would need to use our Video SDK for that use case.

Please note the Video SDK is not compatible with regular Zoom meetings, meaning a Video SDK session and Zoom meetings are logically separated from each other and their data, metrics, and features do not overlap.

To answer you Video SDK questions:

Video SDK does not have a feature to schedule meetings out of the box but you can implement a scheduling system that mirrors the functionality of a regular zoom meeting. This would require generating unique session topic names and storing that in your backend database to use at the time of the scheduled session. You could also utilize custom urls with the encoded topic name as a query parameter to mirror the invite system.

In-meeting chat is available as a feature in the Video SDK. However, you must implement the chat UI to display the messages passed in the meeting. The SDK offers methods to retrieve the message data for this case.

Reactions and Emojis are not supported out of the box but since this is a UI feature, you can implement your own reactions and emojis and use them within a Video SDK session. This would probably require use of a 3rd party emoji library and some animation with css but it’s definitely possible.

Hope this helps with your development!