Instead of the Meet and Hangouts boxes that used to be on the left-hand side of your Gmail screen, you’ll now have a Chat box, a Spaces box, and a Meet box. On your browser, go into Settings and look for the “Chat and Meet” section. By the way, “Chat and Meet” lets you hide the Meet section in Gmail if you want to.Usually, Chat will appear on the left side of your Gmail screen, but you can choose to have it appear on the right side instead.You have the choice of selecting “Google Chat,” “Classic Hangouts,” and “Off.” Assuming you want to try Chat, click on that.In the top menu, select “Chat and Meet”.Go to your Gmail account and go to settings (the gear icon in the upper-right corner).There will now be four icons at the bottom of your Gmail app. On the bottom of the screen, instead of just Mail and Meet icons, you’ll now also have Chat and Spaces icons.
FREE GOOGLE CHAT FOR MAC ANDROID
If you’re using an Android phone, check off “Show the chat and spaces tabs.” If you’re using an iPhone or iPad, toggle “Show the chat and spaces tab” on.Tap the three-line icon at the top-left corner.Currently, at least, you need to do it separately on your browser and on your mobile device. If this sounds useful to you, then the first thing you need to do is activate Google Chat for your Gmail account. It’s for work projects, party planning, or any other activity where you want to keep the conversation going over the course of days, weeks, or longer. Each space has its own name, remains available for people to leave and rejoin, will send out notifications, and can share files. Once the conversation is done, it’s done, and it will be deleted after five days (if you’re using a personal rather than a Workspace account).Ī space, on the other hand, is for more long-term conversations. What’s the difference? According to Google, chat is simply a way for two or more people to chat together without any formalities - for example, if you wanted to quickly talk about where you were going to meet for lunch, you’d create a group conversation among your friends. The latter is done via a separate area that Google currently calls a Space. The former can be done just between two people or between several in what Google calls a group conversation. Google Chat allows you to hold chat sessions with friends and groups of friends either on an informal or formal basis. In mid-2021, Google apparently took note of this and pit itself against Slack by taking two of the features from its corporate Workplace app suite - Chat and Spaces (previously called Rooms) - and integrating them into its standard Gmail app. Real-time collaborative chat, as exemplified by apps such as Slack, has become a common way to communicate between colleagues and friends, especially since early 2020, when so many of us transitioned to working from home.