Psychological safety is the condition where people feel able to speak without fear of judgment. We treat anonymity as a design decision, not a fallback, something you choose deliberately for sensitive or evaluative questions.
Keep responses anonymous
Anonymous responses are the foundation of psychological safety in a Menti, and anonymity is the default. Mentimeter does not assign voting IDs to participants and does not require participants to log in. Anonymous voting leads to more honest responses, and people are more willing to contribute their input.
The cost of removing anonymity is not dishonesty. The cost is silence. If someone does not feel comfortable giving feedback openly, they will most likely give no feedback at all. This is why we recommend keeping a Menti anonymous for any question about personal views, team dynamics, a manager, a course, or anything a participant might fear getting wrong. This is the mechanism we call Boost Psychological Safety: when speaking carries no social cost, more people speak, and what they say is closer to what they think.
Three settings identify participants when you need identification:
Participant names requires participants to enter a name before accessing the Menti, and shows those names in selected places in the presentation and on the Results page. Participant names is available on Pro and Enterprise plans.
Verified Participants requires participants to log in through your organisation's identity provider (IdP) before they can join and respond. Verified Participants controls who can access the Menti. It does not connect responses to identities on its own. Verified Participants is available on Enterprise plans only.
Learning management system (LMS) integration verifies students through your institution's LMS. Mentimeter applies the Login required and Participant names required settings automatically in two cases: when you select Graded while adding a Menti to Blackboard, Moodle or D2L Brightspace, and when you add a Menti to Canvas as an assignment. Students are then identified by their LMS account, and no Mentimeter account is needed. Verification of this kind reduces bullying, harassment and other unwanted behaviour, because responses are attributable. LMS integration is available on Enterprise plans only, works with Menti Live only, and is configured by your LMS admin together with a Mentimeter admin.
Verification through an LMS does not require your institution to share student names or email addresses with Mentimeter. Your LMS admin chooses how much data to share when configuring the integration, and Mentimeter can store an anonymous student reference instead of a name. To keep a Menti in an LMS course anonymous, disable Login required. Students can then join with the QR code and respond anonymously.
Read the LMS integrations FAQ for the full detail.
For guidance on combining the Participant names and Verified Participants settings, read choosing participant identity settings for your use case.
One caution about small groups: in a small group, you may be able to connect a specific response to a specific person even when the Menti is anonymous. Tell your audience when this is possible. As the presenter, you are responsible for any personal data you collect.
Decide when responses appear on screen
Choosing when responses appear is the strongest protection available to you, because you configure the choice in advance rather than reacting live. When the first responses appear immediately, they can influence everyone who answers next and lead to groupthink. Hiding responses until everyone has answered is the mechanism we call Protect Individual Thinking: people record what they actually think before they see what anyone else thinks. These settings are available on all plans.
Select an interactive slide, then choose one of three options in the Edit menu on the right:
Instant responses displays responses on the slide as participants submit them.
Responses on click hides responses until you reveal them with the forward arrow key or the Show responses button.
Private responses keeps responses hidden until you change the setting or reveal responses manually. You can still view responses on the Results page.
For a Menti covering a sensitive subject, choose Private responses or Responses on click. Nothing reaches the screen until you decide it should.
You can also hide responses during a session. Click Hide responses in the presentation menu at the bottom of the slide, or press the H key to toggle between hiding and showing responses. While responses are hidden, you can still see how many people joined the Menti and how many responded to that slide.
Read hide or show results for the full detail on each option.
Hide free-text responses from the Mentimote
Hiding responses from the Mentimote is the most reliable way to keep an unwanted response off the screen, because responding stays open while you moderate. Your session continues, participants keep submitting, and the response you hide leaves the presentation screen. The Mentimote is Mentimeter's presentation remote, which you open on your smartphone or on a second screen. The Mentimote is available on Pro and Enterprise plans and works in Menti Live only.
To hide a response from the Mentimote:
Open the Mentimote. In the presentation view, hover your cursor over the top right corner of the screen and click Open Mentimote. You can also open your Menti, click the drop-down arrow next to the Start presentation button in the top right corner, and select Open Mentimote.
Navigate to the Word Cloud or Open Ended slide with the response you want to remove.
Select the Responses tab in the right panel of the Mentimote.
Click the Hide icon next to the response. The Hide icon is an eye with a line through it.
Pair this with the response display options above for the strongest protection. Set a Word Cloud or Open Ended slide to Private responses, read what has arrived in the Mentimote Responses tab, hide anything unwanted, then reveal the slide. The room sees a moderated set of responses rather than a correction.
Responses appear in the Mentimote Responses tab even when the slide is set to Private responses. Setting a slide to Private responses hides responses from the presentation screen, not from you.
Two behaviours are worth knowing before you rely on hiding responses:
Hiding one response hides every matching response. Matching ignores capitalisation, so hiding "pizza" also hides "Pizza" and "PIZZA". Check what else matches before you hide a word that participants may have submitted for legitimate reasons.
Hiding does not delete. A hidden response is still saved in your results and still appears in your exports.
To restore a hidden response, open the Responses tab in the Mentimote, hover over the Hide icon until the icon changes to an eye, then click the eye icon. Every matching response is restored at the same time.
Read remove or hide responses on Word Cloud and Open Ended slides for the full process.
Enable the profanity filter
The profanity filter masks or removes recognised profanities from the presentation view. The profanity filter is free and works per language, so you select each language you want filtered.
To enable the profanity filter:
Click the Settings icon in the top left corner of the screen.
Select Language preferences.
Select the language or languages you want profanities filtered for.
Enable Always use the selected filters to apply your selection to all new presentations.
Three limits to keep in mind before you rely on the profanity filter:
The profanity filter does not remove combined words, or non-profane words that contain the letters of a profanity.
With a large audience the profanity filter may be unable to keep pace with new profanities, so some input will reach the screen temporarily.
Filtered words are still available on the Results page, even though the presentation view masks them.
Read Mentimeter's profanity filter for the current language list.
Moderate Questions from Audience before they reach the room
Q&A moderation lets you approve or reject each question before the audience sees it, which matters most in large sessions where a single hostile question can change the tone of the room. Moderated questions are approved before the audience can upvote them. Q&A moderation is available on Pro and Enterprise plans.
Q&A moderation needs a Q&A slide, or Q&A enabled across your Menti. If you have not added either yet, read gather questions from your audience first. Q&A itself is available on all plans, and there is no limit on the number of Q&A slides you can add, including on the Free plan.
To enable Q&A moderation:
Open the Q&A slide in the editor.
Click the responses section of the slide canvas.
Toggle Moderation.
Copy the moderation link that appears, or click Open in New Tab.
In the moderator view, approve a question to make it visible on the presenter's screen and on participants' devices, or reject a question to remove it from the list.
Send the moderation link to a colleague and let them moderate while you present. Your moderator does not need a Mentimeter license of their own — anyone with the moderation link can moderate. Brief your moderator in advance on the subjects you want filtered. Delegating moderation is the single most effective step for a high-stakes session, because moderating well while speaking is difficult.
Dismiss only questions that are truly irrelevant. The audience prioritises the rest through upvotes, and rejecting too much undermines the trust that Q&A is meant to build.
Read moderate your Q&A session to ensure a great experience for the full process.
Close responding and remove responses in the presentation view
Closing responding and removing responses in the presentation view are your fallback options once a session is running. Both apply to Menti Live only.
To close responding on a slide, click the three dots in the presentation menu at the bottom of the screen and select Turn off responding, or press the C key. Presenters usually close responding once enough responses have arrived — at the end of a session, or when moving to the next slide.
If you are presenting without the Mentimote, you can remove a response in the presentation view instead. Removing a response this way requires you to close responding on the slide first, which is the trade-off against hiding a response from the Mentimote.
To remove a response in the presentation view:
Press the C key to close responding on the slide.
On a Word Cloud slide, hover over the word you want to remove and click the word.
On an Open Ended slide, click the Trash icon in the bottom left corner of the response box.
Press the C key again to reopen responding, if you want participants to continue responding.
Removing a response in the presentation view hides the response in the same way as hiding the response from the Mentimote. Every matching response is removed, the response is not deleted from your results or exports, and you restore the response from the Mentimote.
Consider slide types that do not accept free text
Slide types that do not accept free text remove the risk of unwanted input completely. Multiple Choice, Scales, Ranking, 100 Points and 2x2 Grid all collect responses from options you write yourself, so no participant can put unexpected words on your screen.
Consider the trade-off when building your Menti. Word Cloud and Open Ended slides surface ideas you did not think to ask about, and replacing them can narrow what you learn. We suggest using non-free-text slide types when the risk of disruption outweighs the value of open input, not as a general default.
If you are presenting in a business setting
In a business setting, the questions that need the most protection are the evaluative ones, questions about leadership, a change programme, team health, or a project that did not go well. We recommend this combination:
Keep the Menti anonymous. People may not feel comfortable telling you what is not working if their name is attached.
Set evaluative slides to Private responses, read the responses in the Mentimote Responses tab, then reveal them once you can frame the discussion.
Enable the profanity filter for every language spoken in the room.
For a town hall or an all-hands, enable Q&A moderation and send the moderation link to a colleague. You cannot moderate well from the stage.
If you are teaching students
When you are teaching, you are managing two risks at once. The first is the student who stays silent because they are afraid of being wrong in front of peers. The second is inappropriate input, which students do submit from time to time. We recommend this combination:
Keep the Menti anonymous for anything a student might fear getting wrong, and for any feedback on your teaching.
Set opening questions to Responses on click so the first few answers do not bias the rest of the audience.
Enable the profanity filter for your language of instruction, and for any other language your students are likely to use.
Set Word Cloud and Open Ended slides to Private responses in a large group, read the responses in the Mentimote Responses tab, hide anything unwanted, then reveal the slide. Reading responses before the lecture theatre sees them is more reliable than removing a response after everyone has read it.
In large lectures, enable Q&A moderation so students can ask questions they would not raise a hand to ask, while you keep control of what the lecture theatre sees.
If you present without the Mentimote, know the removal steps before you need them. Press the C key to close responding, then click the word on a Word Cloud slide or the Trash icon on an Open Ended response.
If you need to know which students participated, Participant names on Pro and Enterprise plans, Verified Participants on Enterprise plans, and LMS integration on Enterprise plans will each do that. All three change how safe students feel, so avoid using any of them for questions about your teaching or about a student's confidence in the material.
If your institution uses an LMS integration, keep graded Mentis and anonymous feedback Mentis separate, so that a student answering a graded question and a student telling you the course is too fast are not doing so under the same conditions. For course feedback, anonymity is what makes the feedback usable: students tell you what they really think rather than what feels polite.
Settings in Menti Form and Menti Pulse
Menti Form and Menti Pulse handle response visibility differently from Menti Live.
In Menti Form, you decide whether respondents see the responses collected so far. Click the Settings icon in the top left corner of the editor, next to the Menti title, then select Never show to keep responses hidden or After responding to reveal responses once a respondent has submitted.
In Menti Pulse, results are always visible to participants after those participants have submitted their responses.
The profanity filter, Q&A moderation, the Mentimote and removing responses are available in Menti Live only.
If you need more help
If you have any more questions about setting up your Menti, reach out to us at hello@mentimeter.com and describe the session you are running, we'll be happy to help.