Hangouts to Google Chat upgrade beginning August 16th, with option to opt-out

What’s changing 

Beginning August 16, 2021, we will start upgrading users who have the “Chat and classic Hangouts” setting selected to “Chat preferred,” unless you explicitly opt out. Users who already have “Chat only”, “Chat preferred”, or “Classic Only” selected, or users with both services turned off will not be affected. 


Additionally, the “Chat and classic Hangouts'' setting will also be removed for all users in your domain unless you opt out of the upgrade. 


If there are affected users in your domain, you will receive an email notification that contains more information and any necessary action that needs to be taken.


Who’s impacted

Admins and end users


Why it’s important

Unless you opt-out, Google Chat will replace classic Hangouts as the default chat application for your affected users. 


Beginning late 2021, classic Hangouts will no longer be supported and all remaining users will be migrated to Google Chat. Learn more about the Google Chat upgrade timeline.



Getting started


If you don’t take any action, all users in your organization who have the “Chat and classic Hangouts” setting selected will be automatically upgraded to “Chat preferred” and the “Chat and classic Hangouts” setting will no longer be accessible. We anticipate this migration to take around  two weeks.


No action is required if there are no users in your domain with the “Chat and classic Hangouts” service setting selected.


Additional details

The “Chat and classic Hangouts” setting will be removed from the Admin Console regardless of your selected setting, unless you opt out.  


Conversation History: With the exception of a few special cases, messages sent in classic Hangouts 1:1 and group conversations will be available in Chat. Learn more about Chat and classic Hangouts interoperability.


Direct calling: Chat doesn’t yet support direct calling in the same way as classic Hangouts. We anticipate direct calling to become available for Google Chat later this year — we will provide an update here when that feature becomes available.