Google Chat

The new format is off-putting and unnecessarily dark. In an attempt to be modern, the app has been downgraded. It doesn't look terrible, but compared to the previous format it is far inferior. Said previous format was much more simplistic (though not oversimplified) and clean, it was essentially perfect. The new format, although still clean and simple, is not perfect. The "read" symbol just floats awkwardly at the side of a text, and as mentioned previously it's very dark. Most of my friend group uses google chat to communicate, and upon the update taking place we've all been quite unhappy with it. Of course, it's still the best way to communicate for us (we all possess different phone brands so for the two Apple users out of our large friend group, it's much more efficient to talk to the rest of the group and for them to talk to us. In short, although the function of the app is amazing, the modernization of it has ruined its aesthetic;It looks more like the default messages app or whatsapp and fails to stand out as a result. I suggest adding a setting to switch between formats perhaps, as I know not everyone is unhappy with it, but for those who are it's quite important. Thank you for reading this.

Google Chat is a versatile messaging platform that offers a variety of features to enhance communication and collaboration. It provides users with the ability to chat one-on-one or in groups, share files, and integrate seamlessly with other Google Workspace applications. The platform's user-friendly interface and real-time messaging capabilities make it a convenient tool for both personal and professional use. Additionally, Google Chat's integration with Google Meet allows for easy transition from chat to video conferencing, adding to its functionality. Overall, Google Chat is a reliable and efficient messaging service that simplifies communication and boosts productivity.

Google Chat added the ability to have rooms where specific topic threads can be created. That’s really nice and a feature we were hoping for coming from Hangouts. Unfortunately, that’s about where the improvements end. Google Chat is at its best on the mobile app, but if you’re using it regularly, across mobile and in the desktop chrome extension, you’ll quickly see the questionable choices made by the developers. I used Hangouts and now use Chat in a professional environment, for more casual short form comms, and it’s clear after 6 weeks of heavy use that Chat wasn’t designed for anything more than light usage. It’s completely unwieldy with more than 20 active conversations. The alphabetical sorting of conversations means hunting down the person you were just talking to. The conversations are spaced relatively far apart and take up way too much screen real estate. The color scheme is blindingly bright. Et cetera. If you’re only using the phone app and only for chatting with a limited number of friends socially, which is clearly the use case they have decided to laser focus on, you’ll be fine with it. If you’re on the mobile app only, ok. If you’re hoping to do more with it, you should look elsewhere for a more thoughtfully designed, and scalable, communication method.

Once again, I’m waiting a ridiculous amount of time for a friend’s video to upload in Google Chat so I can watch it. I’m so tired of this nonsensical app that I have to say something. Here are all the problems I’ve encountered: - Can’t share files unless they’re in Google Drive (Google trying to limit you to using their products) - Videos are uploaded when you share them, which means it takes FOREVER. Hangouts shared videos right away, so I know they don’t have to do it like this. - Why on earth does it keep a copy of every link or image I send in the chat text box? Why would I want that when it’s right there as the last thing I sent? I hate having to delete it just to continue the conversation. - Separation of individuals and “rooms” confused everyone in my family (we use this as our primary communication). I’m used to it, but toggling back and forth to figure out where the new message is is still a nuisance. - WTAF the computer app isn’t a standalone app! You have to have Gmail open in Chrome to be able to use it even though you have to install it separately. Again, Google trying to keep you tethered to their products. There’s really almost nothing that’s an improvement here. Yes, you can react with emojis, and my mom no longer accidentally calls me when she leaves the chat open on her phone. But the rest of it is so annoying.

Google chat here, seems a bit complicated as compared to that of hangouts, I said this because, there’s not difference in the chat when you’re chatting with a friend or a family member… unlike hangouts, senders text is always at right and receivers text is always at left, that alone make it simple for you to understand your conversation easier, but here’s the case, google chat normally has the two so close to each other and also on one part of the chat surface. Another view to your app so far, I don’t know if others might’ve also realized that as well. The features “block and report” , that should be two things because they’re of different meanings, so it shouldn’t play a single role when you tap on it. For example, I want to block someone for a while, not permanently, but immediately I tap on that feature “block and report”, the person’s gmail is been taken out of google and can’t be found again to replace. Unlike messenger or any other with similar features , you can block someone and unblock to chat with that same person and can also report that person if you find that person ain’t the person you wanted or if that person is trying to scam you…. You guys really need to work on that, either than that, recommend your app as the best app ever.

How are you doing all and i hope you’re fine and I want to inform you that the google chat app has a problem you need to fix up for now because for me am a crypto currency’s guy and I used google chat for my business app with my friends and families and other stuff members as well the problem is that if you create a google account now and you’re access to use google chat within some few days they will restricted 🚫 your account without doing any bad things and that’s what makes mad because of my crypto business doing and I’ll lost all my bitcoin and some other stuff I needed and please google and I want to tell you this because it’s not good for me and I don’t feel comfortable with it so please try to change it for us so that you can make Google chat become better or best App to use for chatting and other stuff or maybe you bring a new law that if you’re doing bad things on google chat they can give warning ⚠️ on it but if you didn’t stop it then you can suspend the account just like weeks and then give the person come back for his google chat and i hope you to read my message I did here thank you and have a good day 😃

1. It separates one-on-one conversations and group chat rooms into two different sections, so you’re constantly switching back and forth to check on everything. 2. All wording is on one side of the screen, unlike a normal texting chat design (like discord) — while some might be used to this it can get seriously confusing, and there’s no way to personalize it to make it easier to read. Not only that, all wording is formatted in rows, not in text bubbles. This can make comments and messages blur together and get confusing if you aren’t used to that kind of messaging. In summary, hangouts is far more manageable and user friendly, and personally I think that chats should have merged with hangouts so that we could get the best of both worlds, instead if all of us being shoved into this circus of a site. Honestly, the only good thing I could find about chats that was nice was the dark mode (something google hangouts doesn’t have.) This is a big switch for a lot of hangouts users, and I wish that they would make it more manageable so that we could personalize it better. I’m sure in time I’ll get used to it, but I do think that this transition could have panned out better.

I use Chat as the main Communication platform between most of my friends and family. It’s missing some basic features. For example: ability to edit a message after it has been sent. Ability to delete images after they have been sent. Would love to be able to delete a gif that I mistakenly sent. Images are slow to load compared to hangouts. The new spaces feature is handy, but a little confusing. The app is slowly getting better. I can easily send messages from my mobile device or PC. The app easily manages multiple profiles. The search chat feature is nice. I love that I can make a video or voice call straight from the app. Currently on my pc the Chat app shows up as another chrome window rather than a standalone app. Making it really difficult to quickly check messages. Not sure it that is a bug in the app or a new feature. Overall this is a great app with a bug or two and some missing features. Nothing that cannot be fixed in an update.

I can’t stand how both participants of a conversation are on the left side, not on alternate sides and colored in different colors so they can be differentiated like in Hangouts and other traditional messaging apps. I can’t stand that the status is only “active” or “away”. In Hangouts you were able to tell if a participant was active in the last 15 minutes or 2 days or a week for example or you could turn the status off. You could also see if your messages were read. Also every time I leave a chat and close the app, when I re-launch the app my most active conversation has disappeared and I have to re-add the person I was chatting with. This is so annoying!! And I can’t stand that I’m being forced to use this crap app. I’m seriously thinking of deleting this app its that irksome. Plus, I’m looking through other reviews and I’ve seen as far back as a year ago, the same concerns being brought up by users and obviously they haven’t been addressed which means Google chat developers are not taking these concerns into consideration to make updates so that’s a hard no for me. I’ll be looking into other ways to communicate with family and friends.

I just switched over to Google Chat from Google Hangouts and let me say, it’s different. First, I am not able to switch out of dark mode which for me, is unnecessary and annoying. I am not a fan of my screen being dark, but I guess it is something that I will have to get used to. Second, when talking with someone your text and their’s both appear on the same side of the chat which makes it more complicated to figure out what they said and when. Third, sending videos and pictures take up a lot of time. The loading process is very time consuming and it causes a pause in your conversation and confusing as to why you aren’t responding. The desktop version is great, but the mobile adaptation just isn’t cutting it for me. I intend on using this app heavily but with the way it’s going so far, it will take a lot of getting used to. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate the different functions that have been added, but it just isn’t the same.

Ok, setting aside the lack of audio/video call features, I actually prefer Google chat over Google hangouts for several reasons. (1) there’s dark mode, (2) the interface is smooth, (3) you can react to messages with emojis, (4) I can actually see everyone’s profile pictures. Is it ripping off discord a bit? Yeah, but I don’t mind. The only downside for me is that you can’t switch between accounts easily, or see all your contacts (unless you have an open chat with them). But overall it works fine, and it feels much better than hangouts. Hangouts has been going downhill for a while (like mentioned earlier, I can barely see anyone’s profile pics + no dark mode). And the calls in hangouts never had good connectivity. I know this wasn’t a “me” problem because my friends also had similar issues. So overall, I definitely recommend Google Chat as a replacement for Hangouts, especially if you mostly text!

I don’t see any similarities between this app and hangout and to make it worse you take out the voice call option and now forcing everyone to use Google chat☹️☹️ that’s so ridiculous… All of my colleagues at work who use hangout said they don’t like Google chat and it’s all because of these voice call, that would definitely be a plus and make Google chat less stressful than it already is.. I can’t see how many minutes my friends where online anymore, just active and away Mehn that’s not cool you guys really have to reconsider your option or think about putting hangout back on here for everyone and not force us to use something because you guys think it’s nicer without considering every other persons opinion and this is a market place but you treat your customers like we don’t have opinions.. please take your time to understand my review I really love Google apps and I want hangout app back or put the voice call option on Google chat please thank you guys.. we are family I hope my opinion matters, LOVE

Hello, I wasn’t too happy to see that I would be having to switch apps but I had no other choice. My friend and I used google hangouts as one of our only ways to communicate with each other due to certain circumstances she’s in. When I switched to google chat I thought it was very confusing. The messages are all on the same side. The feature I hate the most is the fact it won’t let me call anybody..? For some reason the option to call someone is disabled and I have no idea how to fix it, I think its very inconvenient. Im a mobile user so I have no idea if it’s different on computer but I do not have access to a computer and I feel that is not fair to have certain limitations on mobile. I also find it annoying that the messages they send are also linked to my gmail. So when they send a message, I also get a notification that pops up every time from my gmail inbox, I think there should be a feature that allows you to disconnect the notifications from your inbox. (or connect whenever you choose).

I doubt that this will work but I’m giving it a try. Me and my friend group always have used hangouts and it was amazing and google chat is more like a productive “work chat” app. If there is anyway this message can be seen by one of the Devs who works on this it would be amazing but my friends and I really want the feature that hangouts has that shows who has read the messages. Whether it could be an option a space manager could toggle or just active all the time. It would be so useful to tell who has been active and reading the chats. Thank you (In a direct message I have noticed it does show you when the person has read a message and what the last message they read was but I’m talking about adding this feature to the Spaces/Group Chats. Maybe it could be added like a space manager could toggle the feature since I’m sure not everyone would like to have it active all the time but it would be awesome just like in hangouts)

Admittedly, I’m aggravated about being pushed to switch from hangouts, and that’s going to affect my view of this app, but dear god why can’t I put group chats and DMs in the same tab? Switching back and forth is frustrating and confusing. It’s also hard to tell who’s said what, and implementing literally any system for that would make a huge difference. On a less important note, I’d like to be able to assign a photo to a group chat so the icon isn’t just a letter (if there is a way to do this, I couldn’t find it, and I Looked). On the plus side, having the docs and sheets we’ve shared in a tab for group chats is really cool (I’d love to be able to see photos, too, as well as have this option for DMs), it infinitely easier to search than hangouts was, and there is dark mode integration. Overall, it’s fine, I guess? It feels very similar to Microsoft Teams, which is to say not ideal for a casual messaging app but probably a good option for work.

Hey, this is someone who has used Hangouts VERY often. When I heard things were moving to Chat, I didn’t mind. On desktop, it was great. I really liked the reactions and the upgrade on statuses, that was cool. But on mobile? Sheeesh, not so good. There’s this weird glitch where I can’t send videos, even when they’re relatively short, and I can’t hardly send photos either! You can’t send multiples at once like you did on HG, and there’s no way to monitor if they’re sending or not. You hit send and you’re just shown the chat- you don’t see the picture sending or anything and its kind of annoying. Also, there seems to be a lag in statuses. Me and my friend had both set ourselves as active (both using chat) yet to each other, we showed as away. Yet my other friend (me using chat, him using hangouts) appeared as active. 🤨 If you’re going to do a transfer from HG to Chat, could you have at least ACTUALLY made Chat better?

I have been using Google Hangouts for years now to communicate with my friends who don’t have phones to talk with. I love the new interface they have added for Google Chat. But I have a few issues with the app. (1) In group chats or rooms you can’t see if anybody has seen your message or not. This isn’t something that would be a life changer but it would be nice to have. (2)One of the features that Hangouts offered was the icon features. In Hangouts, if your friend were to be on your chat with them, their icon would be visible. If they went off of the chat their icon would fade a slight bit. I would also like this feature just because it helps me tell of their actually online. (3) When somebody goes offline from Hangouts it takes 15 minutes for Chat to get the I formation that they went offline. This is a big thing that needs to be worked on.

I don’t see any similarities between this app and hangout and to make it worse you take out the voice call option and now forcing everyone to use Google chat☹️☹️ that’s so ridiculous… All of my colleagues at work who use hangout said they don’t like Google chat and it’s all because of these voice call, that would definitely be a plus and make Google chat less stressful than it already is.. I can’t see how many minutes my friends where online anymore, just active and away Mehn that’s not cool you guys really have to reconsider your option or think about putting hangout back on here for everyone and not force us to use something because you guys think it’s nicer without considering every other persons opinion and this is a market place but you treat your customers like we don’t have opinions.. please take your time to understand my review I really love Google apps and I want hangout app back or put the voice call option on Google chat please thank you guys.. we are family I hope my opinion matters, LOVE

I like the app due to I never used hangouts before the updates however the app keeps updating by itself. Before, my contacts looked like the preview and it’s been like that for 2 years until this afternoon when it just completely changed. The contacts where shoved to the left and shrank and instead of when clicking on the contacts and seeing the conversation with no other contacts in view, I can see the other contacts when I’m texting someone else and it disturbs me. One reason being that I’m so use to the other version that it’s hard to adjust. Another being all of the text has shrunk and everything is just off. Overall, it’s a very good app and is useful. This is the only thing I do not like about the app and I sincerely wish it was more like the preview page not whatever this new think is

I liked Hangouts. I don’t know why they are discontinuing it! At least you can keep your chats and history though. This app is more on the professional side with documents, meetings, and projects that is good, don’t get me wrong. However, I used Hangouts for social chats so those things aren’t that useful. What is really bothering me is that there isn’t chat bubbles so everything is squished together and you can’t tell who said what. When I sent a picture, I sent it like 3 times on accident because it kept on saying the message failed to send. Also, you can’t tell if the other people in the “chat space” read the messages like it did in Hangouts. They also removed the stickers! Although this app is good for professional chats and business meetings, it wasn’t as good as Hangouts was for social group chats.

I was told to switch to google chat a while back but I didn’t force me but I was forced to switch sometime last month and let me tell you it just isn’t as good as hangouts when I got to the app and I am messaging my friend and we decide we want to call well the call button is gone so I can’t even call him without going over to gmail and calling him from there. You can access it from gmail and can only call from gmail so you should only have gmail at that point. I also miss when you could group call instead of having to make a meet don’t get me wrong a meet isn’t bad but it just takes less time to just group call. But it is still ok if you add the call button I would give you 5 stars and it’s a plus if you bring back the group calls. Thank you for listening.

Hello there, let me start this by first saying that I haven’t used gchat all that much so maybe I’m not quite used to all it’s features yet but I think no matter what my point will stand: hangouts was better. I can’t frankly think of a reason why google would take something that had been used for so long and was very effective and completely change it, especially now when people are relying on online chatting platforms even more. I have used hangouts for 6 years and have never had any complaint with them, my school used it profusely for contact between teachers and students (as well as between students for group projects and clubs). Relating to this, a club I am a part of that heavily relied on hangouts as a way to communicate meeting times and important information is now struggling to figure out how to use gchat the same way - again, we haven’t used gchat that much so maybe we’re missing an important feature, but if it was truly that important it should have been more obvious to know.

I know my personal 2 cents won’t matter much to Google, and will honestly seem silly to most; but… Where are the stickers??! That one bit of personalization made Hangouts so comfortable and warm for emotional expression in personal conversations. Yes, of course there are universal emojis and Apple memojis… but the stickers (especially the bunny and cat) are just perfect and ADORABLE. Why would you take those away? It seems like it would be such a simple feature to carry over. For this reason alone, I will hang on to Hangouts until its dying breath. Conversations just aren’t the same without them. For what it’s worth the discussion UI itself isn’t all that personable, either. Chat was definitely intended for a more business, streamlined discussion. Hangouts’ casual comfiness of the alternating bubbles per sender/recipient will certainly be missed.

Google chat is the most ridiculous app ever I’ve seen my entire life, since they took out Hangouts and replaced with google chat it’s been nothing but useless… They just lock you out if your account for absolute no reason, I can count how many accounts that they’ve restricted or blocked for absolute no reason. And when they ask you to make an appeal they respond back to you in the most pathetic way ever.. people I’ve introduced this app too complained about same thing, you just can’t keep blocking people out of their account. I’m writing this cause a new account I’ve been using just go locked out for no reason, and instead to make an appeal I chose to write a review concerning this app. This would be my last time I’ll ever use google chat and I’ll go on every other platform to warn them about it. You guys don’t even deserve a star rating cause you’ve got a poor service/ customer experience

My entire google life has been hijacked I’ve got light black commands sitting on top of the my account settings on top right and it says headers and other stuff on top of the writing on the apps. How can I get rid of this there stealing my identity completely as in every app I have is not the legit app I also believe the actual true App Store has been deleted. I can’t even send emails I get a failed to send wrong server so my phones been put on a private server I’m fixing to drop this thing off with cybercrime if This don’t stop. I do t like police maybe you could send me an email with instructions as you are a developer but are you a legitimate Google App developer or a fraud?? There it is.

I switched from Google Hangouts to Google Chat for about a week, and now have switched back. Chat separates group from individual convos in different tabs. I only chat with a small group for friends and it was nice to have everything in the side bar with my most recent convo at the top and open. In chat every time I open it I have to do 2-3 extra steps to get to my group chat which is what I use most. It’s annoying and I don’t like it. Also uploading pics and videos is easier and more intuitive in Hangouts than Chat. For me Hangouts is a great app for chatting with friends individually and in small groups. Google Chat seems more tuned to business use. Don’t try to make it an all in one chat app, it will only be bad at many things instead of good at a few. *I have deleted this app and will be using Hangouts until forced to switch.

Good night love you too have sweet dreams sleep tight and I’ll talk tomorrow when I’m awake I hope you’re having fun with the boys and girl tonight love you too daddy bye for now and I’ll text you later on when I’m up and awake if I wake up in the morning and if I don’t wake up I won’t you to know I have never stopped loving you and your kids and your wife and your sister and her husband too. Love is always the greatest gift in life and always will be your own happiness and love always love always and forever always love::::::!!!!!!!!!!!!!:::::::::::::: You have loved me since you first were born and I love you so very deeply and so much and your sister also love you both very deeply forever Love Daddy

The function of the app is fine, but I found the chat layout of Hangouts to be much better than what this currently has. (At least make it match the way chats currently appear on desktop.) There’s no immediate obvious visual differentiation between messages you send and messages you receive, which I find annoying and visually clunky. Other messaging apps like iMessage and Telegram distinguish your sent messages by putting them on the right of the screen and tinting them a different color. This app doesn’t do that. It also separates each message you send by your name, which is mildly irritating if you’re sending a series of pictures. I would love to see an update of the app’s appearance to bring it up to speed with other messaging apps, including the legacy Hangouts app.

This is a very great app and i do enjoy it very well together with my family and also coworkers, but google chat should stop taking accounts unexpectedly because i have lost a business account and also most of my chats with my family and friends and i am not getting them back again, i feel bad about how it work this time around and if it were to stopped i would be happy with it, people loss their documents unexpectedly when they take the account from them and thats too bad, kindly check and help us with that.

I deeply miss Google hangouts. The video quality was great, always adjusted to strength of wifi & prioritized everything working over everything being the highest quality which made it the best for talking to friends and family across the world. The UI on mobile was super easy to use for me and my whole family which includes a lot of older folks. I used to be able to make international calls on it for free of pretty cheap when the app was new which now I’m pretty sure you can’t do at all now. It was superior to any other video call platform I ever used and the stickers and ability to mess around on each other’s portraits were how I bonded over a distance. Now that’s gone and a new thing I have to look for. Google meet already exists for companies, I don’t understand why chat also has to be directed towards those types of people and has to take over hangouts.

The app is clunky when trying to send pics. There is a see delayed repsonse time from when you upload a picture. The send button starts to spin like it is thinking if it should upload your pic. When the send button is available after the spinning. Then you're able to send the pic. After 3-4 minutes, that's when you find out if your picture has sent or not. It doesn't show you trying to send the pic as a preview in the chat thread like it would for hangouts to let you know that is trying to send but can't for unforseen reasons. Instead, the person on the other end of the chat asks if you ever going to send the pic. When looking on my end, after 7 minutes has passed, then I receive a small message asking if I want to resend or delete. This need to be fixed. It's frustrating and my friends and family are experiencing the same issues.

Google Chat is lackluster compared to previous iterations of Google communication tools, and here's why: 1) Chat can only send ONE picture at a time and there is significant lag before your client updates to display that you've sent a picture, so multiple repeat pictures are common in threads because you don't know if it actually sent. 2) Video calls are seriously stupid. You send a "Google Meet" link into the thread, which other users have to click to join a separate call. This is absolutely senseless compared to the incredible ease we had with Hangouts. Members of my family have missed out on precious moments and announcements because of this. 3) No SMS integration. 4) gifs are hit or miss and some device clients only play the gif once. 5) Not P2P encrypted. Pretty sure Allo had all of this and more, and it worked beautifully, until it was deprecated in favor of trash like this. Why in the world do we keep going backwards!?! I don't know why Google feels the need to make their user base constantly change apps to keep up with basic communication functionality. From Hangouts to Allo to Hangouts to Duo to Hangouts to Chat. I'd just like a stable and secure P2P encrypted application to use where I can video chat, send pictures (yeah, that’s multiple pictures AT ONCE), and text.

It’s nice to be able to search in this app, as opposed to Hangouts, but that’s where the pros end for me so far. The concept of chats vs spaces seems unnecessary and is what convolutes the app. I tried to give a name to a group chat as a space, but realized it’s then completely separate from chat threads (takes the whole history and converts it to a “space”), it doesn’t show up in the chats page, and searching in chats does not find matches in spaces. I decided I wanted to revert the (long) conversation history back to a chat thread but apparently that is impossible. I’ve also found multiple chat threads that include the same people, and sharing to Chats from other apps is very buggy. It was a much better user experience in Hangouts, with the exception of the search feature.

Google hangouts was such a good app. The only problem was the scammers and suspicious accounts. Hangouts was easy to use, you didn’t have to send a “meeting link” (copying zoom much?), you could see when people are active, when they were LAST active, and you could see if they had seen your messages or not (for some reason the chat section of the gmail app has this, the app does not. Sloppy organization.) Google chat has none of these. It also does not have stickers. Furthermore, the design of the app is boring and meaningless. It’s basically just a black and white screen with slots for people. The notification sound is boring and not even close to comparing with the iconic hangouts sounds. This app is bad in design and function. It’s like hangout’s incompetent second cousin that everyone hates. Google, I’m disappointed. If you have any intelligence left, bring hangouts back.

It is frankly astonishing how bad this app is. In general, it is worse in every way compared to the competition.... but specifically on iPad it reaches a new level of horrendous. It *literally* is worse than Hangouts was on iPad, and Hangouts on iPad was already abysmal. There is not only no slide-over support, nor side-by-side support, but the interface itself is just the blown up phone interface. It is honestly incredible anyone at Google even allowed something like this to be released ever, let alone while they are constantly badgering their user base to switch to it. Congrats are in order to the Google Chat team. You have made me switch chat platforms away from google for the first time since the _original_ "GChat" from like 2006. Well done on finding new lows on what I already thought was a rock-bottom of user interface design.

Wow, you know Google 'Chat' is a particularly characterless and sterile environment, with no customizable elements at all, that I can see. Doesn’t even have 'your' text on one side and 'mine' on the other, just one long column of text scrolling down the left side. Clearly an app that wants you to think "I am a soulless tool designed for team collaboration. Individuality is not productive. Design elements do not benefit the Collective. Colors distract from the Process. Expression must be solely in the Service of the Hive. Return to your Work." This is not an app designed for chatting with friends and family. Those things have no value. They do not serve the Collective. Your personal data has been collected, and will be reported to Google Authorities with the content of this negative review. Your existence on the Internet will be terminated.

The latest update makes it basically unusable on iOS. I expect Google has plenty of IT department customers to test it - anyone already using Google Apps who was desperate enough to save money would be willing to switch over since it's part of Google Apps. Chat was released broken and totally unfinished. That being said, Hangouts Chat has slowly gotten progressively better. And it's interesting to see the features they prioritize. They aren't trying to match feature parity with Teams or Slack, they're doing their own thing. But this latest app update is horrible. It's harder to see what's unread and what's not. And reading a message won't actually mark it as read most of the time. I've moved away from using my phone for chat and now just miss work messages. This update has made it much harder to communicate at work and much harder to work from home.

1. :D :-D works and does NOT change to smilie. AWESOME because it reflects me speaking to someone who is not like me, but is a dear friend. 2. Uploading photo did not take a lot of time at all. 3. It is easy to see who said what. Those who can’t, simply hate change because there is a WHOLE LINE of white space between people speaking! 4. Longer text do work, but have not checked Nanowrimo type work sending. I only have 10 lines in my trial. Friend and I used to send “what we wrote during word wars” back and forth. These would be around 2000 words. 5. No longer have to wait and wait and wait for Archived Messages to load up as a thing to select. I never archive messages anyway. 6. Browser: In browser I still need to be able to POP CHAT OUT. So still trying to figure this out. I need to look at chat while discussing email sometimes but chat covers email which is NOT ADA compliant! Too hard to discuss email with brain damage. Having phone app up AND email on 2 different devices is stupid as a work around! Thank you!

Google should be positively ashamed of themselves! This is the worst chat app I have ever used. They took away hangouts and gave us chat which has significantly less functionality. You can’t even attach multiple photos at one time! What year is this, 2010!? Trying to get to attach anything or any other feature requires hitting small little icons that are easy to mess and layers deep. Trying to use the text box and move your cursor around inevitably ends up hitting the emoji icon and bringing up that screen. There is no distinction in terms of who is talking so trying to look through the conversation becomes quite challenging and hard on the eyes. There is no excuse at this point in time for a chat app to be this bad compared to all others. I have been using Hangouts since it started 15 or so years ago and now they lost me.

So I use google chat to chat with my friend group everyday, as we have a large variety of devices running on a variety of different operating systems and it’s easier to use a 3rd party messaging app that doesn’t come stock on one of our devices, then to use one that does come stock on one of our devices (I.e ios messages) but PLEASE make it so the app is compatible with split screen, I would love to be able to listen to music while chatting with my friends on google chat without any interruptions.

I’ve been using Google Messaging apps for most of my entire life, much to the defiance (and laughter) of my friend groups - Gchat & Hangouts were good tools, I chose them over more popular ones like WhatsApp & FB messenger. This new “Google Chat” is a slap & spit (simultaneously) to the face of those - Google has gone BACKWARDS with this new useless iteration of its messaging app. The interface is more complicated, I can’t tell if my message has been clearly read or if I even sent it (all msgs are on the same side), pictures & videos take much longer to send, and I do NOT need a section for “Files & Tasks” - who asked for this app? Absolutely nobody… For the first time I will be not using this Google app - bring back Hangouts or significantly change this, look at all the negative recent 1-star reviews 🚮

Okay, so there’s two problems I have discovered recently, and here’s what they are: first, I saw a buffering thingy whenever I entered the app, which was changing colors from red, blue, green, and yellow, and that doesn’t seem to be going away, and secondly, I have five videos in the files thing, and there’s no way to get rid of them, like I am so confused about why the files thing doesn’t have a ‘delete videos’ button/option. 😪😪 But if it does, then that would be so helpful! 😮 And this is all because I’m rating this three stars, because of those two problems I just explained.👉 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ So yeah! You can fix the problems like I told you! :-)

I know you’ve made this for businesses. Yes, it is seamless and wonderful for people that are using this for their business for their offices and that since yes it’s wonderful. I use it to reach out to family. So I would still like to get back the stickers we used in Hangouts. I would also love if maybe you added more stickers or maybe different stickers if this app is supposed to be for everyone initiative also be user-friendly for those that use it for their families I use it to contact family that is away and I can’t go visit because of Covid. I use it to talk to my fiancé overseas so they said it should be user-friendly not only for businesses but for the average Joe.

This app feels less streamlined and straightforward than hangouts. It always takes 2-3 taps to switch between messages or perform any action which used to feel smooth and immediate in the hangouts app. Multitasking between accounts, spaces, and messages is a chore. Hangouts was great. I was able to get my tech illiterate 76 year old mother to use hangouts for video calling and it worked great. After we were forced to switch to this app, she found video calling "rooms" concept incomprehensible. I got her on Facebook messenger instead, which is far more straightforward to use and it works much better for our simple use case. I'm not really sure whose needs the Google app is designed to fulfill but it seems like a step backwards in usability.

I used to love using Google Hangouts to chat with my boyfriend daily while he is overseas working. But, now I can not even chat with him without either of us running into issues. So, tell me Google, WHY, why are you killing off an app in the middle of a global pandemic that everyone but you seemed to like? Why take away everything that everyone liked about your app and turn it into this? I HATE this app! You guys made an internal use only app public, and it shows. Want to get rid of your chat app? Then get rid of this garbage too! Want to join Yahoo and MSN? Then keep it up. We the users of your app, want OUR features back, and we DEMAND to have a choice as to rather we use this app or Google Hangouts which you keep refusing to allow us to use. See your app in the digital trash bin Google, right where it belongs.

I don’t like it because it is more complicated then using regular Hangouts from before. Another reason I don’t like too much of peoples personal information being shared that should not be shared like phone numbers, addresses, date of birth, personal family pictures, and many more personal information that should never be shared. If they could only make it simple and keeping everything personal and private then I have no problem in using it. Thank you for allowing me to share my point of view. Sincerely yours, BM.

Worse in every way than Hangouts. Adding reactions to individual messages is nice but not a feature anyone asked for. Messages don’t always send if you exit the app too quickly. Notifications are unreliable. Stickers are gone. Overall just another step in Google’s consolidation of everything (built-in compatibility with Mail, Drive, Calendar, Meetings) but Hangouts had more personality AND worked better. I get that not many people still used it, typically favoring iOS messaging or Discord, but I might prefer switching to those rather than this inferior replacement. It might have gotten three stars on its own merits but the fact that it axed Hangouts on its way in loses it two of them. I don’t foresee this being useful outside of a work context, in which case I’d probably still prefer email.

So I have an old iOS version and when Google chat said that I needed to get the latest iOS version to use chat, I kinda expected that. But then I found out that I still get notifications for the spaces that chat blocked! Also it didn't block my chats, and it blocked all my spaces one by one. So clearly they could show my spaces, even when they blocked my spaces. Also, sometimes it says "You have a new message" in a notification in the old google hangouts tone, not sure what that could be. I know that they fixed most or all of this. The app is very good exepct for these reasons. But who would use Google Chat anyways when you could use iMessage or even Whatsapp?

To start off, I got this app before because my friend didn’t have a phone number and it was great for texting and calling for the duration that it was available. I’m not saying the app is horrible, the features are amazing; threads, formatting, status, it’s amazing. It’s the app itself I’m not too happy with. First of all, in hangouts I could see all my groups and contacts in one place and I could name group chats which you can no longer do. Second of all, it doesn’t just let you switch to dark theme as the light theme is really a pain. And lastly, the app was so much easier to use before, there weren’t all these extra complications, hangouts was ideal.. this wasn’t.

Ive been using hangouts for 3 years and I accidentally deleted it. So, I was forced to download google chat. After hearing my friends say how awful it was, I was weary. But, they were right. It’s very hard to navigate, I can’t see other peoples statuses, I can’t change my profile picture, I can’t change it from light mode to dark mode, I can’t directly audio/meet my friends, all the chat on one side is just horrible on the eyes, and it’s very hard to send pictures and videos. It takes upwards of 5 minutes to send one picture let alone more. It will only let you send one picture at a time and not a couple like any normal app would. However, I use hangouts to talk to friends, I guess it would be fine if I used it for business? But I miss hangouts.