Google Chat
Reviews and Complaints

While the chat part of this app is good, searching and prioritizing are awful. How can the world’s best search engine have the worst internal search features? Makes no sense. Fixes: Ability to narrow searches (better than current) Better search results (hard to discern results) Ability to sort chats and spaces. Ability to temporarily hide chats and spaces (not remove or delete) Ability to sort chats and spaces by read and unread (optional not forced) Ability to add threaded replies AFTER space is created… (how can this not already be a feature?!) Ability to star chats and spaces temporarily

11/12/2022:
Addendum: Yes- the ‘developer’ added feedback for my review. But the feedback is the same pathetic cut &paste they month after month and even from similar complaints about the apps over a year ago. Some apps are incredibly responsive with significant updates regularly. Not so with google where changes seem minuscule and at a snail’s pace.
So I have downgraded my review from a generous 3 to a more realistic 2. Come on, Google, we know you can do better!

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.

My household was using Google Hangouts because it was an application that was available on all different mobile devices regardless of whether was Wi-Fi only or cellular, regardless of manufacturer.

It was easy for me on my phone to take a picture or send a link to another user on a Kindle or chrome book or phone. I have the iPhone application, I would take a picture of a link, use the Share function to choose Google Hangouts, choose the individual or group I want to send it to, and send. With Google Chats, there’s no way to see who I am sending from, let alone change who I’m sending from (of my logged in Google accounts) and is a big problem, as I have work and personal accounts, and my children are also logged in. Choosing the recipient or recipient group is an extra step compared to Google Hangouts.

The biggest used case that’s the problem, is that I could use Hangouts to call my children at home. However I can no longer do that. In Google chat you have to set up a Google meet and send them the link and hope they see it, but there’s not really any “phone call”-like audio or audio&video session you can ring through to their WiFi device like with Hangouts.

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.

Google is HISTORICALLY inept at chat, and they've done it again. They had a pretty decent chat app (Hangouts) and killed it, to be replaced with a gangrenous "chat function" sewed onto their new Frankenstein (Google Workplace) that wants to be Slack but isn't, wants to be Zoom but isn't, wants to be an office suite but isnt Microsoft 365.

Google, WHY? You're a RICH company. Surely your top hundred developers are among the top 500 in the world. Why are your best developers NEVER in charge of a project? Because you don't know WHICH of your developers are the GOOD ones?

Using the Chat function is so obtuse, that it reminds me of those "helpful" electric window buttons that insist on rolling all the way UP, or rolling all the way DOWN. Getting it to stop where you want it requires a miracle. My God this is an ugly duckling of a chat app. Hangouts wasn't actually very good (because it was abandoned before it got a change to mature), but at least it wasn't a ToFurkey or a TurDucken, and it didn't make the user ANGRY.

Chat ONLY works well, and cleanly, when EVERYTHING that isn't chat-oriented, ISN'T THERE. That means that all of its UI design elements will be chosen without ANY regard to Google Workspace functions. Make a chat into a CHAT.

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.

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.

The basic function of notifications does not function on the new iOS 16 current patch level of the state specifically for my device, which is the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Obviously, if notifications do not function, despite reinstalling the application and ensuring that it is turned on in settings not to mention the phone itself is not on vibrate, or do not disturb having checked all of these things. This app simply does not provide notifications when receiving messages on the iPhone. That being said, it becomes utterly useless as it reliable chat app without this function.

Chat features
Aside the critical issue, the chat features seem highly limited. Pressing and holding chats in order to respond to them with reactions functions does does in fact function, but the lack of a recently used section within side, the section there makes you have to constantly look for the same frequently used emoticons.

The lack of two-way encryption in chats, although perhaps is built in, but perhaps it is not. Customer in this particular case is an aware due to the fact they cannot physically see this within the settings, or may very well know. Just leaves me as a client to believe that there is no end to end encryption for chat or calls.

I will continue to use this app and dissect functions a little bit deeper and should I locate more issues. I will provide additional feedback. Please turn to the primary issue and I will in fact review and remove this review and update the stars.

Thank you

Almost piece of this app is awful.. Here’s an itemized list as to why

- You can’t select multiple images to send, only one at a time

- The layout of this app’s text messages are too clutched together, making it hard to understand what someone is saying. There isn’t a chat bubble around the message and things are rather tiny

- No light/dark option in the app, it automatically changes to whatever you have currently on your device (I like hangouts/Discord because it isn’t just black or white, those two have lighter and darker shades of grey, making it easier on the eyes)

- There isn’t a way to collapse the chat information (like files/chat/tasks) down into a “...” that you can tap, making it take up too much room at the top

- group chats are forced into “spaces” making switching from chats very difficult

(Even despite the separation of group chat to single chats, and a bar at the bottom to switch between, it’s still obnoxious as you can’t just swipe to get to your main chats like you can in discord/hangouts)

- “spaces” also don’t have little icons of everyone who is in them so it just makes things feel confusing. Even though there is the name in these “spaces” they are easier to understand who is in them when you had the icons.

I would give this app if it weren’t for the slight edge it has as a more elitist corporate Hangouts.

I suppose if you want to feel smart by somehow understanding or enjoying this confusing and time consuming app... This is the one for you. But otherwise? Just use Discord.

Sending, and receiving images is a train-wreck. No Apple CarPlay support. Sending, and receiving videos is even worse. When you have limited reception, the app handles sending and receiving messages extremely poorly. You can re-try sending, but it’s clunky and doesn’t work very well. Google chat is never among the messaging platforms allowed on airplanes free messaging over WiFi, further solidifying the uselessness of this app. Using the Chat camera function is a terrible. If you snap a photo and attempt to send it, but if it fails for any reason (reception or whatever) your image almost always becomes lost and cannot be recovered. So frustrating. Want to send a video to a friend? You technically can do that. Click the button to play the video back after you have already sent it to your friend and you’ll get an error message telling you the video has not yet been processed for your viewing, that’s right, the video you just uploaded nine minutes ago on that same phone cannot be played back…How can they make such trash!?
The ability to edit messages is only afforded to enterprise customers. Dumb. Presence/status is inferior to hangouts. There is no message telling you how long a user has been idle. You cannot swipe to exit an image, instead, you have to awkwardly reach for the X in the top left corner. You cannot swipe between images. There is no section for sent and received images/files/links, you just have to scroll and scroll and scroll. In summary, it’s a minimal viable product, and it doesn’t seem like Google has any intention of making Chat anything more than that.

Basically, the title says it all. For people like me who just use it to talk with friends, the whole app is completely unnecessary. I don’t need “files” and “tasks” and all that nonsense that very few people have any desire to use. I get that you wanted to advertise your own product, but forcing everyone to look at it with no option to turn it off isn’t going to make anyone want to use it any more than they did before.

As other people have said, the separation of individual chats and group chats makes the app much more difficult to use. It’s actually kind of stressful for me, to be perfectly honest: I need everything in one place to function. I also miss having the ability to archive chats, since I personally don’t like seeing ones I don’t use anymore.

I’ve seen other peoples’ reviews saying this app seems to be only designed for casual use; as someone who only wants casual use, it seems to be designed only for professional conversations. I assume the intent was to compromise between the two, but the outcome has made everything difficult for both. The ability to add gifs and react to individual messages is admittedly pretty fun. You did good there. I also have to say, the general appearance of the app is prettier. If you gave us the option to turn off some of the unnecessary features, I’d be content leaving hangouts behind—on iPhone, at least.

I gave it three stars because I could live with this app as is, if I had to; I just feel like “I can make it work” is not the status an app should have, especially for one replacing a near-perfect app I used on the daily. The amount of unnecessary features on Google Chat is overwhelming, and kicking people off of Hangouts was just not helpful to anyone.

I have been using Google Hangouts for over 2 years as one of my main messaging Apps. About a year ago I discovered Google Chat, but didn’t think much of it. I kept using Hangouts as normal for a while. Then I saw a message pop up in Hangouts that said I should switch to Chat in Gmail. I explored Chat and found some interesting features, but major drawbacks. Many or all of those drawbacks are still here today. Here they are:
1. Video Calling isn’t in Chat like it was in Hangouts, it takes you to meet if you click the video call thing
2. Read receipts don’t work on Group conversations
3. Typing receipts only work if both are on Chat
4. You can never see if someone is on a conversation at a certain moment (Hangouts shows that they are on currently by brightening a person’s profile pic)
5. Whoever is the space manager of a group conversation has too much power, they can’t be removed and with a single tap they can remove and delete the conversation for everyone else
6. In group conversations, even if someone has left the group, they can still see all recent messages on the group without rejoining (not including photos).
7. Hangout’s awesome stickers aren’t on Chat
8. This is mainly a preference, but I think that Hangouts has a much better aesthetic than Chat. I like how you can easily see the separate messages in Hangouts, I wish Chat did that.
My opinion is that Google should keep Hangouts and bring over some Chat features or they should keep Chat and bring over Hangouts features (although I like the aesthetic of Hangouts much better than Chat). We all know that that is very unlikely tho
I chose two stars because it’s not all bad, but there’s a lot that Chat could do better. Google please listen to me that Chat should bring some of the great features that Hangouts had!

When I heard Hangouts would go away and this was its replacement, I hadn’t expected it at all. This appears to be a more business-oriented site and not an alternative/“better” communication method for just talking. What if we need to use it for regular chatting? Why would I, a person trying to communicate with their friends, switch from a perfectly good casual chat app that was working better than my standard IOS messaging app, to a business talk app made for companies? Why did you shut it down in the first place?
Its comparability to Slack made it sound worse than it was. (And it is definitely not great.) Slack is not very user-friendly and it lacks basic functionalities that Discord comes with easily. This app, while not confusing whatsoever, is still lacking in many of the regular chat features that come expected with it being a CHATTING APP.
Editing messages does not work on the computer. It only uses your device’s theme on mobile, making it annoying to switch from my dark-themed web tabs to the beam of light that is my Google Chat tab. It lacks a proper “reply” feature that would allow easier group communications when multiple people are chatting at once. I can’t have multiple chat threads open at once like I did with Hangouts. I have to click back and forth every time. When switching from another app to Chat on mobile, the chat scrolls itself upwards and messes up the thread. I can’t use asterisks anymore because the words get bolded. I can’t send many photos at once anymore. I have to get them all manually sent over one at a time, which takes a long time. It’s all just inconvenient, messy, and unfinished.
Though I will say, this sound is much better than the intrusive, loud, Hangouts sound. Additionally, the fact that it has dark theme on mobile is a nice change, and it functions. It carried things over, and it functions. Like Slack.

I used Hangouts for many years on both Android and iPhone. I have been using Chat for several months on iPhone. I have used it long enough to share some good thoughts.

My #1 gripe is that although I like the ability to add reactions to what people sent (and I like that all emojis can be selected as reactions), I just found out last night that there is no notification sound/banner at all when somebody adds a reaction. It could easily go unnoticed without a notification sound/banner, and definitely would not be noticed if you reacted to something from earlier in the conversation that is no longer visible on the screen without scrolling. A notification sound and banner MUST be added for this feature in order for it to be a pertinent feature. On iPhone Messages, when somebody reacts to a text that was sent, it makes a cute sound and there is a banner letting recipients know a reaction was made. This MUST be done with Chat too otherwise reactions are nearly pointless.

At first I didn’t like that both/all parties in a conversation are on one “side” of the screen. I still don’t prefer it but my brain has gotten used to it.

I don’t like that stickers were taken away. I enjoyed the cute Hangouts stickers.

I do really like that a search option was added. That is probably the best improvement. This review would be ⭐️⭐️ if not for that.

I don’t like that with both Hangouts and Chat, when people send multiple photos, you can’t page through the pics upon opening one of them. You have to open one, exit, open the next, exit, etc. It’s ridiculous. That was one of the biggest improvements Hangouts needed and now Chat does, too. There should also be a more efficient, faster way to save photos both individually and as a batch.

But going back to the beginning, my #1 gripe is the lack of notification for reactions. If that gets fixed, I will update to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. If the other things get fixed, I’ll go ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!

I have been using Google Hangouts for over 2 years as one of my main apps and then awhile ago I discovered Google Chat. There are definitely pros and cons CONS: 1. Video Calling isn't in Chat like it was in Hangouts, it takes you to meet if you click the video call thing 2. Read receipts don't work on Group conversations 3. Typing receipts only work if both are on Chat 4 You can never sep if someone is on a conversation at a certain moment (Hangouts shows that they are on currently by brightening a person's profile pic) 5. In group conversations, even if someone has left the group, they can still see all recent messages on the group without rejoining (not including photos). 6. I think that Hangouts has a much better aesthetic than Chat. PROS 1: First and Foremost: Dark mode, this is the main reason that I like chat as much as I do 2: Colors for texts, you can change the color of your writing. I would however like it if there were more colors 3: You can use an emoji for the chat for reactions which is a cool feature 4: Status. While I don’t use this a ton I think that this is a handy feature for a lot of people 5: Tasks. I mainly use this app for talking to friends, but I can see how having tasks can be a huge help in a work/preparation scenario 6: Gifs. These are cool to use and are a nice touch 7: You can add a description to the chat which is useful 8: I have not used this feature but it has a “Mark as unread” which for some may come in handy 9: You can see who can join at any time so you can either remove them or add them with ease 10: THIS IS A BIGGIE. The Search Tab. Super useful and I can’t count how many times I’ve used it. Searching for a message that was sent forever ago is a nightmare on Hangouts but easy in chat. All in all I think that Hangouts looks better but has less uses. I think that putting just even Dark mode and Searching on hangouts would be a lifesaver. All of the other ones would be great if they were added too. ✌️

First of all, I have done this sort of review before. They created a superior version to Google hangouts, yet they left out core feature that made the Hangouts app useful.

First of all, joining conversations. Hangouts had an invite system, where if someone wants tot all with you, they would put an initial message into the text box and send an invite, and that person would be able to either accept or decline it. On chat it’s different. If someone wants to talk with you or invite you to a room, all they have to do is press ‘Add’ and your in, now questions. While this might be more efficient in some ways, it takes away choice, and I think it should be different.

Also, hangouts put the profile of people under the last message they saw. Chat does have this, but only for private conversations, and it’s nowhere to be seen in chat rooms. That was one of the main things I liked about Hangouts. Plus, the actual interface for chatting is different…and not in a good way. Yes, the actual text bar and icons for inserting files and stuff is the same, but messages appear not in chat bubbles, but simply as sentences under the person’s name. It’s not even like in the desktop app (I’ll get to that later) where each message appears slightly apart instead of shoving them together.

And then there’s the fact that the desktop app is worse than the hangouts extension. Yes, it’s better in user interface, but to get the notifications, the apps actually has to be open, unlike the hangouts extension, which would give you a notification regardless. But on the subject of the desktop app, let’s talk about something it does that the phone app can’t. The desktop app allows you to send gifs through chat, but that feature is absent on the iOS app. Also missing is the desktop and Hangouts feature to download videos from chat, which I’m pretty sure used to exist.

All that said, I don’t hate Google chat. It had useful features, like dark mode and editing and deleting messages, reactions, and overall a more bug-free user interface. But I wish that they had included all the features I just described

Okay, maybe it was just time for a refresh, and “Hangouts” couldn’t continue to exist for complicated technical or organizational reasons. Fine. But many of us rely on having separate apps so we can customize alerts, etc., and they made it seem , for a short while, like we were not going to have that again. So I’m grateful that they brought back a separate app! And they’ve cleaned it up significantly, and added some important features. Thank you, Google!

However, it’s clunky in some areas that affect me every day:

1. Multiple images. When I share three screenshots together, I mean to share a “deck.” I mean for the recipient to be able to easily flip through the images to e.g. review progress photos in rapid succession, or see a bunch of related content in the context of my remarks written as text. As it is, my text is lost as each image not only fills the screen, but scrolls off previous images and the text that I wrote. Worst of all, when the recipient taps an image to zoom in, they cannot swipe to progress to the next image. Instead, they must change context by zooming back out, re-acquire context (“where am I, again?”), find the next image, and zoom in again. It’s a terrible experience, especially with more than a few images.

2. Emoji reactions. It’s great that this feature now exists, but it doesn’t honor the Apple aliases for emoji on my Apple device. For instance, if I want to give someone a “sci-five,” I can’t type “llap” or “spock” like in the rest of my Apple apps. I must type “vulcan” to get this glyph: What I would propose is that Google use the native emoji keyboard for reactions. But shy of that, at least allow us to react by typing an emoji directly. If I use a keyboard shortcut to get “” into the reaction emoji search box, the emoji doesn’t even match itself. This is silly, and wastes my time figuring out what Google calls something that I have already directly encoded in Unicode for you. Searching for “” should find “”

3. Above all, please, please figure out notifications. It’s super hard to know why I’m not getting notified by this app. Am I “away”? No. Is “focus mode” turned on in my iPhone settings ? No. What’s wrong? Who knows. I’ll ask them to send a text after they send a message in gchat, I guess There should be one place to look to be sure that notifications will work when I need to be informed about a new message.

I just updated to Google Chat after my Hangouts app abruptly forced me to make the switch mid-conversation. I did not like the beta version of Chat so I was postponing the update as long as possible in the hopes that Google might change their mind. Unfortunately they have not, so I am forced into using this instead (though I might just uninstall it all and use Discord instead).

Enough about me, here’s some feedback about the app itself:

- Graphically everything is laid out like Google Drive, which is a bit of whiplash coming from the more muted colors and defined sections of Hangouts. Apple started this trend of “lineless design” several years ago and I hated it then too. There are 3 main buttons: chats, group chats (sorry, “Spaces”), and the 3 lines in the top that you’re supposed to just know are your settings and status.
- I am not a fan of the division of chats into group and individual, as (like many others have pointed out) the group chats are separate and alphabetically ordered, instead of appearing in one chronological list. I want to be able to see all my chats in one place in chronological order. I don’t want to have to tab back and forth between individual chats and group chats.
Another issue with this format is that these icons do not go away when you enter a chat; the two remain at the bottom of the screen where you can easily accidentally hit one and either swap (from your chat to the “Spaces” menu, for instance), or accidentally throw yourself back to the listing of all your chats, unless your keyboard is up. It is unnecessary, there is already a back arrow, and this takes away screen space from the chat itself.
Side note: “Spaces” feels like corporate trying to be cool. They’re chats too, just keep them that way…in one list. Please.
- Uploading photos is…annoying, to say the least. You can no longer upload multiple images at once, and there also appears to be a bug? that removes the photo option icon if you remove the image you selected from your chatbox, intentionally or accidentally. The only way to get the button back is to go back to the menu and back into the chat. It also disappears if you do not *startwith adding a photo, but will not return if there is text in the box.
That said…this icon is probably unnecessary in the first place, as the + to the left of the chatbox also has an option to upload photos. Another redundancy. I would just do away with the icon option unless a heavy rework is in the future.
- Emojis. For some reason this icon feels more invasive than it was in Hangouts, and it also aggressively pops up a full screen of emojis to pick from. There is a “quick selection” at the top but it’s just as slow either way. I am grateful my phone keyboard has a separate section for emojis because this is far too annoying… Fairly sure this is something from the desktop version that was not adapted to mobile well.
- Stickers are completely gone. Goodbye fatcat, kawaii penguin, and crazy koala. I will miss your rare but whacky usage. (Sometimes a pleading cat with a mouse in its mouth is exactly what you need, y’know?)
- Video and voice function is gone. This was one of the main pros of using Hangouts, as quality was quite good and could support multiple people. You can now *onlymake a Meet link and go through that. This adds an extra step, and also extremely limits functionality that was possible with Hangouts. Meet, by default, only allows 1 hour meetings, so this is no longer a good option if you were, for instance, using Hangouts to host your online group DnD calls, or a weekly family hangout. Discord has worse audio quality than Hangouts did, but has no limits on video or voice call length (for free). I will be falling back onto them (or jitsi) for these needs unless something changes here with Google—I would prefer to keep using Google, but this is too clunky and inefficient as it now is.

Pros? I guess the ability to have light and dark mode affect the chat is nice? But there is not an option I can see anywhere in the app itself to toggle light/dark manually—something that virtually every other light/dark enabled app has. So maybe that’s another con, sorry. That is all I could think of, genuinely trying hard.

Overall, I am very dissatisfied and am currently weighing the difficulty of moving family members over to Discord vs the pain of continuing to use this poor replacement for the tried-and-true Hangouts. I don’t know why this change was made (besides money), but I don’t think that the different uses for work ‘spaces’ and personal ‘hangout’ chats were looked at/considered well enough before these changes were forced. If Hangouts is ever reinstated, I will be back in a heartbeat.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

So I’ve downloaded Google chats after 2 years of using Google hangouts. (Because it sadly went away) and Google hangouts is better and way more easier to navigate.

My personal problem with Google chats is the format .

1. In the chats, messages are all jumbled up when you send messages and it’s very hard to read and navigate. Especially when you write huge paragraphs .

2. Unlike Google hangouts, you can’t see when a user was last active or if they read your message. Which those features made Google hangouts way more easier to navigate.

3. All the buttons are just crowded together (the bottom bar when you are texting. The photos, stickers, etc option.)

Despite Google hangouts being glitchy. I perfected it was more over Google chats. It just isn’t that good or the same.

You guys really need to change the format.

I hope Google hangouts comes back.

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.

I held out as long as I possibly could before switching, mostly only for two reasons.

1. In hangouts the sender and receiver appear on different sides, making who said what easier to distinguish. This should be an easy fix. Please look at the reviews and you will see I’m not alone.

2. Sending pictures and videos is now RIDICULOUS. First of all, you can only send one at a time. Second, you capped the size. Third, the upload seemingly takes much longer. Please bring back the ability to send multiple pictures -at least- and lift the size cap

Also, if possible, bring back google voice integration. I want to see my text messages and voicemails in my hangouts/chat.

I’ll continue to use it for now, because my entire family uses it… but if the Gmail pop up chat is ever disabled, I’ll definitely be moving on. It’s the entire reason we switched to hangouts from text messages.

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.

The app is inefficient and very annoying. When I first downloaded the app, I’d get notified every time a new message popped in. Now, I get nothing. I have to open up the app periodically throughout the day just to make sure I don’t have any new messages. Most times I do and the message has been sitting there since the last time I opened the app up.

Any time I try to process a video, it takes minutes, like 10-15 minutes to finally process a video, but the text message I sent with the video goes through, so people know I’ve sent a video, they just can’t open it up to watch it until it’s finally processed.
Uploading pictures is a hassle too. It won’t allow me to upload more than one at a time, and it takes a while to process a picture too.

Overall, this app is very inconvenient, inefficient, and not user friendly. I’ve found myself using other communication apps instead of this one.

I’m only giving one star because I can’t give zero. Just like I only switched from Hangouts because I had no choice.

Hangouts wasn’t perfect, but it was a helluva lot better than Chat. Putting Chat into Gmail on iOS is a no-go for me, but this is not really better. Contacts get messages in an email, all at once, rather than individually the way one would expect. Integration with the iOS share sheet is essentially nonexistent—I can’t get it to stay on the sheet permanently—and choosing my contact involves annoying extra steps.

On desktop, within Gmail, I can’t even get it to let me click links anymore.

I literally only use this app to communicate with ONE person, and it’s one person too many. I’m begging her to switch to regular text because Google has decided to ruin what’s left of its messaging service to where it’s more frustrating to use it than not to communicate at all. Well done, Google.

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 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 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