Google Chat Reviews

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.

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.

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!

Admittedly, I’m aggravated about being pushed to switch from hangouts, and that’s going to affect my view of GoogleChat, 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 GoogleChat . (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.

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.

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.

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 GoogleChat and will be using Hangouts until forced to switch.

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.

GoogleChat 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.

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.

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.

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 GoogleChat! 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 GoogleChat 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.

Can google take some design clue from China’ Wechat? One app catch it All!

Just combine Google Chat, Google Hangout, Google Meet and Google Duo into one App.
One app that can Chat, audio calls, video 1:1, video group!

It is confusing to try to explain to my mom why need so many different apps for similar tasks.
At China, even a 70-years old know to use Wechat! It’s just one App they ever need to remember!

WeChat is also Paypal, Instagram and Facebook in China. So powerful. It does pretty much everything. We can argue that is monopoly, however we can not deny it’s convenience and usability. Why can’t Google make a super app for everything!!!

I understand Google intent Google Meet as a professional app with Monthly Fee.

However, it would be so easy to design a mega communication App that is free for most users for simple 1:1 call and small group video call.

Once a user tries to launch a call with large number of ppl, GoogleChat could prompt a message for app upgrade with monthly subscription or pay-per-use to allow large group video conference.

I used hangouts a lot prior to switching to this new version. For the most part, I’m getting the same functionality I did with Hangouts. I do like the addition of being able to link with Google Suite content better.

However, because the primary purpose of my use of GoogleChat is to schedule meetings, I really miss read receipts. There is no way to tell who is caught up in a group conversation anymore. This was a super helpful feature in Hangouts (when it was accurate) and I miss it a ton.

If anyone else is in the same boat, we should send feedback through their system to see if the developers will add it back in.

Some of the biggest things I don’t like about chat is that the rooms and chats are separated making it really hard to switch back and forth, and I don’t like the wording and text being on one side Constantly confusing me on who is texting. Also to video call you have to use google meet unlike the regular built in video call option on hangouts because no one actually knows if you are getting a call because it is a meeting link and not a call. Otherwise it isn’t the worst but those thing make me not want to use it. If any of this could be changed in the future I would really enjoy chat.

I spent years talking everyone I know into using Hangouts. We did everything on it. Now they invented Chats which is about half as capable and clumsily adds “rooms” instead of just having conversations. When you get a notification, you never know from what room, it’s impossible to combine conversations between roone. It does nothing well. Use Hangouts until they drop it, then move on to some other collaboration software. I’m working with Microsoft Teams at the moment since it’s also being shoved down my throat in Windows 11, if it proves out, I’ll report it here as an additional review as a replacement for Chats.

Used and vetted multiple platforms professionally for chat/messages. Google Workspace (Hangouts/Chat) is a last option.

For a basic messaging application, it’s functional. The look of Chat is a significant improvement over Hangouts. Separation of group (Spaces) and individual messages isn’t too bad. Although, when compared with other options there’s a lack of moderator control functions for a space, voice and video are covered in a separate application, and individuals are unable to delete or edit messages. You at least want to allow your personnel a chance to redeem themselves when they send those accidental messages to the wrong crowd.

A few better options would be Microsoft Teams, Slack, Cisco’s WebEx, Zoom (founded by former WebEx developer), Discord, and even DatChat (no current voice or video functions).

Believe Google has a solid team when it comes to innovate ideas. Though their workspace collaboration tools could use a little more attention. If they need a good project manager in that department, may know someone.

GoogleChat is almost there. It desperately needs to be able to manage multiple accounts, and it certainly should (go back to) a side-by-side format (I don’t know what happened; I’m 90% sure we had that before and then this last update broke it). It would be nice if individual chats could have “conversations” also to keep things nice and organized. You also MUST be able to delete/archive rooms. Oh, and we need some sort of thumbs-up or “like” feature! There have been a lot of “updates” pushed out lately, but not many changes. It would be nice to see some new features/upgrades soon!

I dont usually rate apps . But GoogleChat is way far from being ready . I'm a Google fan boy and I try to adopt the lastest of what Google has to offer in our organization. But this product was one of the worst apps I've used . GoogleChat has potential but is missing many important features and it's very frustrating trying to use GoogleChat . Google Hangouts is an old app and yet it feels more capable and functional than the chat app. I feel Google need to put more resources into GoogleChat . As for now we stuck with an old app (Google Hangouts) and an basic chat app that just frustrating. I wish Google bought WhatsApp a while back 😂. Common Google before you focus on AI try to get focus on getting the basics right .
Gsuite Admin since 2008

1. Better push notification handling.

When I receive a new message and I’m outside GoogleChat , I get a nice little banner notification, can see the content, and hit reply near instantly.

But, if I then switch into GoogleChat , I experience a lag of several seconds as it downloads and renders that same message. This is frustrating because I know that you have already sent me the message - why is it then slowing me down as it downloads and re-renders the same message? It would be better if I could switch to GoogleChat , and immediately see the message.

2. Ability to share content from outside GoogleChat . I’m browsing in safari, see an interesting article, and want to share with my team. There is no activity extension from google chat, so I have to copy the URL, switch to google chat (takes several seconds to load) then paste it in. Slack lets me do this directly from Safari.

Google. You had one job. Look at what your biggest competitor in this sector (Slack) is doing. And then do that thing better.

I have no idea how this service manages to fall so short. My company recently switched to using it instead of Slack as a cost saving measure and everybody is just so miserable. Somewhere in Los Angeles, the morale of a hundred or so workers is incredibly low due to a poorly thought out user experience. Probably.

We found the “conversation” experience is confusing and nobody uses it properly, instead opting for whatever is the most recent conversation bubble. Slack supports conversations too, but does so a lot more elegantly.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me: my colleague sent a .wav file to preview, as we often do. “UNSUPPORTED FILE TYPE” flashed on screen. WHY?!

Hangouts Chat team, please look closely at what the other options are and ask yourselves how you can meet or exceed those offerings. I look forward to a better product soon.

GoogleChat reflects what Google Chat is capable of as a service. Though not as powerful as Slack, it works well enough for basic chat functionality.

My rating is because it is missing support for iOS and iPadOS features such as the multi-window view, split view, app overlay, and dark mode. These are the types of features I would expect for such an application so I can have the chat window open as an overlay or split view if I’m working on a document or browsing the web, while chatting with someone.

Not sure what direction Google believes they are going with the chat functions, but this is a giant leap backward in both the mobile and desktop worlds.

For GoogleChat , i could manage multiple accounts in Hangouts and see a few letters of the last message on the user list. In chat, I have to sign out and back in to navigate between accounts, and there is no preview. This is the most basic function, so I’m perplexed on why the developers would just skip it. I can’t rely on this at all to be productive today.

You were so close Google. The feature primarily missing from this application is the ability to switch between users. I have multiple teams of g suite users, yet I'm tied to just one when I install GoogleChat . It has lead not even recommending this to any other users, because I can never respond to them via the official app! Plus, the naming. Come on. You can't search for any support, because none exists for GoogleChat. All legacy except a few people saying "didn't they kill this off 4+ years ago?"

Almost worth it.

Plz make it true

Google Chat feels like it’s 4-5 years behind in features compared to other chat and team collaboration apps. Document sharing is very limited, no voice memos, no way to reply directly to past messages in thread, and the list goes on and on...

As a G Suite admin for multiple organizations I cannot say with a straight face that this is a good chat app compared to what’s out there.

I hope Google gets its act together before it’s too late. Collaboration chat options from others leave Google Chat implementation in the dust.

GoogleChat is used by a company with employees of all ages, which comes with some confusion when the “high-tech” features evolved such as video meeting. But the biggest concern is the arrangement of texts in the chat. Since there are various ways of responding in the chat, messages are not being shown in chronological order which allows for messages to get lost in the sea of previous messages.

I'm sure the Gteam is working on making this great. But for now, it's just chat with very little integration. The simplicity works for us in that we don't require a crazy amount of integrations and features so we're trying it for a month or so. Hopefully, we'll be able to flip between GSuite accounts on mobile soon. For now, you have to pick 'one'. So pick a primary account to play with it.

With hangouts going away in october 2019, I tried this new chat app. It’s good. Rooms and threads work well. But I am flabbergasted that I cannot log into multiple accounts at once. What is the plan for this come October? I have to use gsuite for work, but many of my friends communicate in hangouts in my personal gmail account today

It is really short sighted that google wants everyone on their platform but then starts to neuter their offerings.

We encouraged our clients to choose gmail and gsuite for their business. We used to use chat and hangouts with them, and this new app is for our company/organization only. We can not communicate with our clients, friends, or colleagues who are under different organizations even if they are also gsuite users.

This is just blockheaded.

If GoogleChat would allow me to things it would be perfect! The first thing I would like to do is be able to change the sound and the volume of that sound. The second thing is I would appreciate if you give an option of breaking through do not disturb.

It’s an ok start, but it’s nowhere near its competitors. We were in the preview and I was disappointed by how basic it was after being announced so long ago. If you are using nothing now and use gsuite, it will probably work for you. If you are using Slack or another tool - you’ll likely be disappointed.