Google Chat is still out there doing its messaging thing, even as Google puts most of its energy into pushing RCS and Messages and there are countless other messaging apps you could use. Hangouts users who made the switch over to Chat do exist and have kept that life going with hopes of seeing improvements from Google.
Today, Google announced that 7 new features are on the way to Google Chat. Yo, that’s exciting!
Below, we’ve got a breakdown of all that’s new and when you might start to see it. Spoiler: a bunch of items are already available. But so you know, we’re talking about things like Gmail features finding their way to Chat, proper editing, quoting, and apps in personal conversations.
- Smart compose: You know that fun auto-complete typing experience you see in Gmail, where the composer knows what you are about to type and lets you swipe or hit tab to finish out a sentence? Google Chat is getting that now. These suggestions are rolling out in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese to all Chat users who use the web client.
- Edit and delete messages: This is already available to Chat users, but it’s new to enough to point out. Google lets you not only edit messages you’ve sent, you can delete them too. No, you don’t have to pay $8.
- Message quoting: In large group chats, it might be useful to quote a message in your response to keep your conversation on track with an individual person or topic. Now, when you click the reply shortcut on a specific message, it’ll quote that in your reply. This is available to all users.
- Read receipts for groups: Read receipts aren’t a new thing, but they are now supported in group chats. When in a group conversation, avatars show next to messages that have been read by people within the group. This will being rolling out to both mobile and web this month.
- Links in text: Google is going to let you hyperlink text in a chat on the web and Android in “the coming weeks.” That means you can highlight text and then turn it into a link rather than having to paste an entire link into chat. That’s sweet!
- Hide inactive conversations: Google has already started to do this – they will automatically hide inactive conversations that haven’t had any action in within 7 days. These conversations aren’t being deleted or anything, they just hide from your chat view on the web to leave space for your active conversations. They’ll also reappear when someone sends a new message.
- Add apps: Google is going to let you add apps to your personal chats “in the coming weeks.” That means the ability to add apps like Asana or Zapier or Giphy to help you get stuff done or enhance your conversations.
Who is out here still using Google Chat? Has the experience been fine for the most part after Hangouts died or do you dearly miss Hangouts? As a Telegram user, I can say that I do not miss anything about Hangouts, but am curious if Chat has been a relatively good replacement too.
Google Play Link: Google Chat
Hangouts was my main source of messaging within my group of friends.. now it’s Chat. I actually preferred Hangouts more but Chat isn’t terrible. Had some kinks to work out early but it’s gotten better. I have other sets of friends that use WhatsApp and others that text.
Don’t understand the part about users making a switch over to Chat? You didn’t need to do anything, Hangouts/Chat is basically the same service with new features added + a name change and all your messages are still there since at least 2013.
SMS/RCS is something entirely different its tied to a specific device so should be able to function on its own separated from apps/services like WhatsApp, Messenger, Teams or Chat. When RCS gets widely adopted and eventually integrated to other apps mentioned you’d still need to have a basic default app as an alternative to handle it.
Why can’t Google merge Chat and RCS Messenger together? It would be so much simpler and frankly less confusing to have all communication in one platform
This and Google Voice integration.
I cannot delete messages when there are external users without leaving traces. So, paying $8 is better than that shit.
Would be nice to be able to remove “frequent contacts” that aren’t even in your contacts list. This has been driving me crazy since Hangouts.
I completely forgot this was still a thing. Haven’t used it in years.
Is there any benefit to having the standalone app on your phone vs within Gmail?
I use it with one person otherwise it’s been Whatsapp or just text. Rcs only select few who have it enabled
“Links in text”
Wow this is like Apple-level “here’s an amazing new feature”
Sweet, please keep updating and improving Google Chat, as it remains my primary way of communicating with basically all of my family and friends at this point. And being able to see and continue those conversations across devices and even if my phone is offline, is quite nice.
Same same