Google Chat

Google LLC

About this app

Google Chat is the best way for teams using Workspace to connect, collaborate and get things done.

AI-first messaging & collaboration, transformed by Gemini
• Stay on top of things with conversation summaries
• Automatically translate messages across more than 120 languages
• Find what you’re looking for with AI-powered search
• Capture action items so the whole team is on the same page

Everything teams need to stay connected and get work done
• Start a chat with a colleague, a group or even your whole team
• Tell your team when you’re heads-down or ready to connect with personalized status updates
• Share detailed updates with audio & video messages
• Connect in real-time, anytime with huddles

The full power of Workspace to transform your teamwork
• Integrated with Workspace apps like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Tasks, and Meet
• Streamline teamwork with smart chips to link files, people and spaces
• Stay on top of requests, comments and approvals with the Google Drive app for Chat
• Install powerful, popular Chat apps like PagerDuty, Jira, GitHub, Workday, and many more
• Build no-code, low-code and pro-code apps with Chat APIs

Secure
• Protected by Google’s cloud-native, zero-trust architecture
• No desktop apps to patch, no data stored on end-user devices
• Keeps data safe with AI-powered data loss prevention (DLP) plus phishing & malware detection
• Migrate away from insecure legacy platforms

Chat is included as part of Google Workspace for consumer, education, and business customers.
Some premium features require a paid subscription. To learn more or start a 14-day trial, https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html.

Follow us for more:
X: https://x.com/googleworkspace
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/googleworkspace
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/googleworkspace
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/googleworkspace
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@googleworkspace
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@googleworkspace

Ratings and reviews

On the one hand some new features are quite nice. I like the shortcut buttons to Google Meet and to Google Drive, the added reactions, etc. However, a lot of the easy functionality of Hangouts is gone. The messages aren't clearly delineated, you can't send a short video, and when you send a picture, it is either a thumbnail on the screen or too large when clicked on. For now, I'll stick to Hangouts.

Utterly useless. The desktop icon doesn't give any indication that you have messages waiting for you and there is no way to set a notification tone specifically for Chat. There isn't even an option for text bubbles to make the thing easier to view. 'Dark mode' makes the background dark enough, but the text remains dark rather than swapping to white, making it impossible to see any text. Finally, it doesn't allow the stored messages to be seen if off-line. This is probably the worst messaging app I have ever seen. I have gone back to Hangouts for now and I am actively looking for alternatives.

Worse than Hangouts... straight away it seems clunkier. Group chats are now segregated. Can't save posted media to phone, you can only "react" to it (ugh). The convenient recent media panel is gone when attaching photos. You can, at least, still attach videos, GIFs and pictures, but now it takes way more steps. The UI feels like a web app somehow. Once again Google manages to make a product worse than what came before. Getting pretty fed up with it to be honest.

What’s new

Current version, for Google Workspace Customers only, includes direct messages, group chats, and platform integration with Google Apps