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Google Chat Tips & Tricks

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Ian Hyzy
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Google Chat is an exciting new way to communicate with your teammates. There's a few tricks you and your team can use to get the most out of Google Chat.

There are three types of Chats:

  • Direct Messages

    • Messages from you to one other person. In these chats, you can use the Off The Record button to avoid saving a history of the chat.When it's blue, your chats will disappear after 24 hours.
    • If you exchanged messages with a person in Google Hangouts Classic, your Direct Messages will appear in both Chat and Classic Hangouts.

  • Group Messages

    • Groups messages are like DMs but include more than one person. These will not transfer from Classic Hangouts to Chat. Group messages should be used for small (single digit) numbers of people, as they have fewer configurable settings than Rooms.

  • Rooms

    Rooms are the most significant new feature of Hangouts Chat. They include several features that make larger groups easier to manage and be in for the group members. 
    • The most significant feature is called Conversations. A Room will have many Conversations. Each conversation keeps its own thread of messages. 
    • A new Conversation will send a notification to anyone in the Room. After that, people who participate in the Conversation will automatically follow it, and get notifications for future messages. You can Follow or Unfollow a conversation at any time by clicking the button in the top-right portion of the first message.
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      • Try to post messages of a similar topic in one Conversation so others can utilize this feature as effectively as possible.
      • Don't put new topics in last Conversation on screen - others now following the Conversation will not be notified you sent a message! 
      • Make new Conversations for new topics of interest.
    • Rooms can also include Bots, which can have many different functions. You can invite a bot by typing the "@" sign and then it's name. Some examples would be typing @Meet to get a meeting link posted to the chat, or @Polly to start a poll. 

Other Tips:

  • If you already keep many tabs pinned in Chrome, you can pin the Chat tab as well. If you want a desktop application, you can download the Chat desktop app. There is no functionality difference between the two.
  • You can quickly type emoji by typing a colon, a keyword (such as "smiling face"), and then selecting an item from the list that appears by pressing tab.
  • Embrace the keyboard shortcuts. Press Shift+? to view them. Here's some of the most useful:
    • Pressing the up arrow in the message box will load your last message for you to edit - great for fixing typos!
    • Shift-enter creates a new line, which is nice for longer posts.
    • Pressing r will reply to the Conversation you last selected.

  • Text Formatting

    • Bold text by enclosing it in asterisks *
    • Italicize text by enclosing it in underscores _
    • Strikethrough text by enclosing it in tildes ~
    • Create a code block formatted (monospaced font) text by enclosing it in ticks `
    • You can combine some of these operators _*bold, italicized text*_

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