Google Hangouts is transitioning to Google’s newest enterprise-grade collaboration product, Google Chat. Chat has a modern user interface, spaces that support better team collaboration, emoji reactions to make work fun, and bots to help you be more productive, and much more.
Beginning Wednesday, January 5, Chat will be where Google users can carry on 1:1 direct messages (DMs), group chats, and team discussions. Please note that you will not be able to make phone calls using Google Chat and can temporarily continue to use Google Hangouts for calls.
What you should do
As classic Hangout apps will stop working January 5, it’s important to do the following before then:
- Explore the new Web experience at chat.google.com.
- Download the new mobile app for Android or iOS.
- Download the new standalone desktop app if you've been using the classic Hangouts Chrome extension or app. You can access the desktop app from a prompt that appears in chat.google.com
- On January 5, refresh your Gmail to get the new Chat in Gmail experience.
Where do I find my old chats?
- You can continue recent conversations from classic Hangouts in Google Chat. Over time, older conversations from classic Hangouts will also migrate to Google Chat.
- All previous chat history from classic Hangouts will be accessible in Gmail.
- The classic Hangouts web interface for chat, hangouts.google.com will remain available during this transition, but you can’t use classic Hangouts by visiting hangouts.google.com in a mobile browser.
Learn more about the switch from classic Hangouts to Google Chat.
