Leave a Review Google Chat
Hangouts was better
I was told to switch to google chat a while back but I didn’t force me but I was forced to switch sometime last month and let me tell you it just isn’t as good as hangouts when I got to the app and I am messaging my friend and we decide we want to call well the call button is gone so I can’t even call him without going over to gmail and calling him from there. You can access it from gmail and can only call from gmail so you should only have gmail at that point. I also miss when you could group call instead of having to make a meet don’t get me wrong a meet isn’t bad but it just takes less time to just group call. But it is still ok if you add the call button I would give you 5 stars and it’s a plus if you bring back the group calls. Thank you for listening.Show lessGuy that reviewed
Dreadful accessibility issues
Personally I have no problem using this app, but as a family we used Hangouts a lot and one of the family is partially sighted. Now we have all been forced to use Chat, the partially sighted member can no longer use it, as the accessibility options are virtually non existent. You can make the text larger, that it. The conversations aren’t in different colours, the text is all left aligned, and the text typing box and icons are all tiny and you can’t make them bigger. They couldn’t see where to enter text or where the send button was or anything. Hopeless. The entire family will now have to move to another messaging app. Do the developers ever actually test these apps with a partially sighted tester?Show lessHatKate
Developer Response
Hi there. Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. We're sorry to hear that. We'll pass this along to the team so they can review and make the Chat app even better. Thank you!Accessibility car-crash
For anyone with even relatively minor vision or motor impairments, this app is unusable. There is no contrast between screen elements, all messages are left-justified and hard to distinguish between senders, the icons are minuscule and so close together it’s next to impossible to hit the one you want without accidentally tapping the wrong one. Appalling.
How come Google, with its billions of dollars profit, are somehow unable to afford to consult an accessibility specialist, or even just spend half an hour talking to someone with impairments, I don’t know, but that would appear to be the case. They should be ashamed of themselves.Show lessAnother Ruth
Developer Response
Hi there. Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. We're sorry to hear that. We'll pass this along to the team so they can review and make the Chat app even better. Thank you!Video/voice calling
I really don’t think it’s useful to not have video or voice calling. on a practical basis, hangout was more user friendly as my dad was able to use hangouts and he’s 82. setting up a meeting just to chat with him seems ridiculous. Otherwise, it’s pretty decent.delizzie1
Awful
Chat is so unintuitive compared to Hangouts. Why oh why did you retire Hangouts and replace it with this? I’m looking at you, Google. You can’t do video calls, have to switch to Google Meet. You can only send one image at a time. In Hangouts you could send 10. Nothing works as well as it did in Hangouts 😢 Ultimately you’ll just lose market share to Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, or any of the other chat apps that work as expected.Show lessLachlanM
I can’t stand it
I can’t stand how both participants of a conversation are on the left side, not on alternate sides and colored in different colors so they can be differentiated like in Hangouts and other traditional messaging apps. I can’t stand that the status is only “active” or “away”. In Hangouts you were able to tell if a participant was active in the last 15 minutes or 2 days or a week for example or you could turn the status off. You could also see if your messages were read. Also every time I leave a chat and close the app, when I re-launch the app my most active conversation has disappeared and I have to re-add the person I was chatting with. This is so annoying!! And I can’t stand that I’m being forced to use this crap app. I’m seriously thinking of deleting this app its that irksome. Plus, I’m looking through other reviews and I’ve seen as far back as a year ago, the same concerns being brought up by users and obviously they haven’t been addressed which means Google chat developers are not taking these concerns into consideration to make updates so that’s a hard no for me. I’ll be looking into other ways to communicate with family and friends.Show lessGrannySpeller
Developer Response
Hi there. Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. We're sorry to hear that. We'll pass this along to the team so they can review and make the Chat app even better. Thank you!Not able to upload any pictures or files
Everything works excellent and I find it very easy to talk to my friends separately and in a group chat. But for some reason when I go to send a picture I get an error message saying that the file couldn’t be uploaded. I have bee troubleshooting for awhile now. Other than that issue, this app works as smooth as anything.Show less1829Ade
Google Hangouts
I don’t like it because it is more complicated then using regular Hangouts from before. Another reason I don’t like too much of peoples personal information being shared that should not be shared like phone numbers, addresses, date of birth, personal family pictures, and many more personal information that should never be shared. If they could only make it simple and keeping everything personal and private then I have no problem in using it. Thank you for allowing me to share my point of view. Sincerely yours, BM.Show lessNANCM
It was better (Please read Google!)
I really like the ease of use and look of Google more than hangouts. But the fact that you can’t even make a call through chat is kinda sad. Google turned it into a business thing instead of a way to connect with loved ones. Now the only way you can make a call is trough a Google Meet. So Now someone has to check their phone to see the link instead of hearing it ring. It’s just so much less efficient and frustrating. Google, if your reading this review… Please add calling!! It makes no sense why they would remove it.Show lessMicah Caskey
I was excited that google chat was an easy transfer from Hangouts
All my contacts and archived chats survived but I am not happy with the new platform.
Finding invitations was a bit of a struggle but I found my way thru. The hardest thing to lose off Hangouts is the audio and video call functions. Sure I can use Google Duos but that goes off of your phone number. What made Hangouts better was I could make a call, video or audio, and use someone’s email instead of asking for their private number.
If there are no plans to be asComparable to Hangouts if not better I see no reason to continue using this app. There are plenty other options out there. I’d preferably use Vibe over this version of Google chats. It is in need of some serious updating.Show lessrickg67
