Tag Archives: Chat

Upgrading from Google Hangouts to Google Chat

In October 2020, we announced Google Chat would be available for everyone. Since then, people could continue using Hangouts or upgrade to Google Chat — available as its own app or within Gmail — to take advantage of its modern features and integration with other Workspace products. We’ve continued to invest in Chat to help people better collaborate and express themselves, and now we’re taking steps to help remaining Hangouts users move to Chat.

A better way to collaborate

Moving to Google Chat opens up new and better ways to connect and collaborate. For example, users can edit Docs, Slides or Sheets with side-by-side editing, making it easier to collaborate while continuing the conversation.

Google Chat also includes Spaces, a dedicated place for topic-based collaboration. Groups and teams can share ideas, work on documents, and manage files and tasks, all from a single location. And, the new integrated view in Gmail makes it easier to use Chat alongside your Gmail inbox, Spaces, and Meet.

Chat and Spaces are easily accessible within Gmail, making it easy to connect and collaborate.

Express yourself

Switching to Chat also makes expressing yourself more fun, whether you’re using emojis with skin-tone selections, rich text editing to give your chats emphasis, @mentions to notify someone in the group or sending a GIF. Now everyone can find just the right way to chime in.

In Chat, people can express themselves easily with features like @mentions, emoji reactions and an integrated GIF picker.

Moving from Hangouts to Chat

An image showing a prompt asking users to upgrade to Hangouts app, and the experience they will get once they upgrade to Chat in Gmail or the Chat app.

Starting today, mobile users will see a screen asking them to upgrade from Hangouts to Chat in Gmail or the Chat app.

First, starting today, people using Hangouts on mobile will see an in-app screen asking them to move to Chat in Gmail or the Chat app. Similarly, people who use the Hangouts Chrome extension will be asked to move to Chat on the web or install the Chat web app. In July, people who use Hangouts in Gmail on the web will be upgraded to Chat in Gmail.

While we encourage everyone to make the switch to Chat, Hangouts on the web will continue to be available until later this year. Users will see an in-product notice at least a month before Hangouts on the web starts redirecting to Chat on the web.

For most people, conversations are automatically migrated from Hangouts to Chat, so it’s easy to pick up where you left off. However, we encourage users who wish to keep a copy of their Hangouts data to use Google Takeout to download their data before Hangouts is no longer available in November 2022 by following these instructions. You can visit the Help Center for more information on the differences between Chat and Hangouts, the migration timelines, and why we recommend downloading your Hangouts data.

The future of Chat

Google Chat offers a modern and integrated experience in Google Workspace. We have big ambitions for the future of Chat, and over the coming months you'll see even more features like direct calling, in-line threading in Spaces and the ability to share and view multiple images. As we take this final step to bring remaining Hangouts users to Chat, we hope users will appreciate our continued investment in making Chat a powerful place to create and collaborate.

Latest stories

The latest on Google Hangouts and the upgrade to Google Chat

Polishing up emoji and making them easier to share

We talk a lot about the most frequently used emoji — ?, ?,❤️... But what about ?? Who will speak for ?? With over 3,521 emoji, there are a lot you have to scroll past to get to ?. While working from home, plus the delay of Unicode’s next emoji release, we had some time to reflect and answer last year’s seemingly rhetorical question: What does World Emoji Day look like without new emoji?


Well, it looks like giving some love to hundreds of emoji already on your keyboard — focusing on making them more universal, accessible and authentic — so that you can find an all-new fav emoji (I'm fond of ??). And, you can find all of these emoji (yes, including the king, ?) across more of Google’s platforms including Android, Gmail, Chat, Chrome OS and YouTube.

Emoji for everyone

Emoji have a global audience and it’s important for them to be globally relevant. Pie emoji is a curious one — it previously looked like a very specific American pumpkin pie (a family favorite!). Now it’s something everyone recognizes. I could crack a joke about how there’s more food to go around but it's not really a joke: This minor change means this one emoji can represent a whole host of pies — apple pie, blueberry pie, strawberry pie, cherry pie, chicken pot pie, beef and mushroom…the list goes on.

Animation of pie emoji changing from a slice o a whole pie

Have you ever wondered why an emoji looks the way it does? Like, the bikini emoji ? — does it really need an invisible ghost wearing it? Now, any body is a bikini body.


Animation of bikini emoji changing to new design

Other emoji changes are long overdue. This year has been eye-opening, and now, so is the face mask emoji ?. This emoji originated in Japan, where people regularly wear masks even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, masking is a universal way of showing kindness to others.

Animation of mask emoji opening it's eyes and blinking


Emoji you can’t miss

When designing emoji, you often have to exaggerate sizes. Our transportation emoji are now easier to see since the new designs allow them to take advantage of the small space they occupy.

Animation of emoji cars changing to their new design

Emoji that get the job done

However, sometimes deviating too far from reality means an emoji comes along and taunts you, haunting your dreams. Oh, that doesn’t happen to you? Just me? Well, when I close my eyes I see the scissors emoji (✂️). I know it’s just an emoji and doesn’t need to be able to actually cut things…but the new one can!

Animation of scissors emoji changing to new design and closing blades

One of the perks of the job is that I get to learn all kinds of things — like the history of accordion design ?, the anatomy of an octopus, how parachutes work! As someone who never learned to drive, it took designing emoji to learn that the yellow painted lines on the road tell you to stay on the right of the yellow line. But, how can you stay on the right of the yellow line if the road is flanked by yellow lines? Well, our new design for motorway ?️ will pass its next driving exam.

Animation of motorway changing to new design

Other emoji just needed to be cooked a bit longer ? (or in some cases, dropped in the fryer).

Animation of food emoji (croissant, rice, bacon, tampura) changing to new designs

Emoji that keep you company at night

If you look close enough, you might also notice a few additions when you switch over to dark theme in a few of the new designs.

Animation of camping emoji changing to dark them with new stars

Emoji that show up in more places than ever before

Android 12 will include all of these emoji when it rolls out this fall ??. And to make it easier for everyone to see emoji ? no matter how old your phone is or when your favorite messaging app updates, starting with Android 12, all apps that support Appcompat will automagically get the latest and greatest emoji ?. Now developers don’t have to write code to display cute baby seals ???.


Can’t wait until the fall? Beginning this month, you will be able to send ? and receive ? emoji in Gmail and Chat without fear they will appear broken ?. Have a Chromebook ? ? We’ve got you covered ☔ with a shiny new emoji picker coming this month. Watching your favorite creator on YouTube and chatting in the live Chat ? ? Send as many ? emoji as you like later this year.

The latest on Google Hangouts and the upgrade to Google Chat

Over the past few years, we’ve invested in building helpful and secure products you can use to communicate and stay connected with the people in your life. This month, we unveiled Google Workspace, which includes everything you need—Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Chat, Meet and more—to get anything done, now in one place. Google Workspace is generally available to all our business customers and next year we’ll bring it to everyone else, too. 


Today we’re sharing an update on what this change means for Hangouts users, including those who use Hangouts with Google Fi and Google Voice. And we’re providing details about the future upgrade from Hangouts to Chat.

Google Chat for everyone coming next year

Next year, Chat will become available as a free service—both in the integrated experience in Gmail and the Chat standalone app. Chat includes familiar Hangouts features like direct and group messaging, with helpful additions like send to inbox, faster search, emoji reactions and suggested replies. With Chat, you can more easily plan with others on goals and similar interests, share and collaborate on files, and assign tasks to help keep everyone on the same page. In addition, Chat features the same strong phishing protections we built in Gmail, so if a link is sent to you via Chat, it will be checked against real-time data from Safe Browsing and flagged if it’s found to be malicious.


Starting in the first half of 2021, everyone can begin upgrading from Hangouts to Chat. To ensure a smooth transition, we will help automatically migrate your Hangouts conversations, along with contacts and saved history. We'll share more specific guidance on what steps you can take when we begin the transition process.

UpdatedHangoutsChat1.jpg

We will help automatically migrate your Hangouts conversations, along with contacts and saved history.

Changes to Hangouts with Google Fi

As we’ve improved the texting and calling experiences available to Fi users over the years, we’ve seen more users shift away from using Hangouts to manage their texting and calling needs. Early next year, we’ll remove Fi support in Hangouts.


Fi users have historically been able to manage SMS and phone calls from Hangouts. In the next few weeks, Messages by Google will provide a similar experience. Fi users will be able to make voice calls and check voicemail from Messages for web, manage conversations from Messages across devices (even when their phone is off) and migrate their existing Hangouts conversations. Beginning this month, we’ll provide guidance about these changes and direct Hangouts Fi users to Messages or the default SMS app on their phone.

Changes to Hangouts with Google Voice 

Similarly, Voice users have historically been able to get calls to their Google Voice number using Hangouts. Over the years, we’ve improved the native Voice experience to offer easy switching between internet and carrier calls, enhanced internet calling reliability, and updated experiences on web and mobile platforms to help users manage everything from one place. Beginning this month, we’ll direct Hangouts Voice users to the Voice app for text messaging and calling going forward, and early next year, we’ll remove Voice support in Hangouts.

Upcoming feature changes in Hangouts

New telecommunications regulations are being introduced in the EU and U.S. beginning in 2021. To comply with these new regulations, we need to remove the call phones feature in Hangouts. In October, we’ll start showing affected users an in-product notification with guidance on how to receive refunds on their remaining calling credits, and early next year, we’ll remove the feature entirely. Separately, in November, we’ll update the group video calling experience in Hangouts with Meet to provide better quality meetings.

Changes to Hangouts for business users

Last June, we introduced the Chat preferred setting in the Admin console to allow any admin to opt-in to migrate all end users to Chat in Google Workspace. We also made Chat preferred configurable at the organizational unit level. In the coming months, we’ll send notifications to Google Workspace admins to detail the final migration stages. Learn more in our Google Workspace Updates blog post.

Empowering our users going forward

As with any engineering project, it’s important to note that timing may shift. Yet we want to give you as much specific information as we can so you know what to expect. We’d like to thank all our users for staying on this journey with us, and we remain committed to delivering a more helpful communications experience for all.