Indisputably google chat is the simplest chat application nowadays. If a chat application means social media apps to you, then google chat isn’t for you.
Google chat is designed to provide a seamless instant messaging experience. With google chat, users can instantly connect group conversations, video meetings, get notifications when offline, and also collaborate on online projects.
You can say google chat is a great productive application that can bring all the employees of an organization together and allows them to do things virtually.
You can easily create a conversation group with the desired person and also create a distinguished room for specific jobs.
Besides, there are so many things google chat offers to ensure the best user experience. If you are looking for a simple yet operative online communication app to organize people on a distinctive platform, then google chat is highly considerable to you.
Whether you already use google chat or you need some experimentation, we are covering here some google chat tips and tricks to enhance your journey with it.
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How to use google chat?
You can use google chat from any device. All you need is to install google chat on your device and start using it.
It comes with a complete white interface where you find all the existing conversations and you can start a new one with anyone through the ‘Find a chat’ option.
To start using google chat, you must have a Gmail account to sign in to the application. When you install google chat, the next thing you have to do is sign in.
Let’s see the google chat interface for both mobile and desktop devices.
If you are a desktop user, you can easily install the google chat standalone app on your desktop or you can get the browser extension to use google chat.
Mobile users can download the application from the play store (Android) and the app store (iOS). And a bonus option for desktop users as they can respond to chat from direct Gmail.
Although the option isn’t enabled by default, you have to make a little change in the settings to get it right there on your Gmail. We will let you know how you can use google chat from Gmail next.
If you face difficulty using google chat, you can get a complete guide about it from here.
Google chat tricks you should know
Being a simple instant messaging application, google chat always intends to ensure a comfortable user experience. If you are familiar with google workspace and its integrations such as docs, sheets, meet, form, etc, you have the best idea about it.
Well, why I am saying it tricks? Because most of the google chat users are not concern about these options. You can also say them hidden features of google chat but they are useful enough and will make your journey more fruitful with this application.
So, what are they? Let’s get a look at those cool tricks.
Add moving animations on Google chat
This cool trick will give you an advanced feel in using Google chat. Although, there is a set of emojis this trick will let you add moving animations on chat.
But before that, you have to ensure that you are using the application from a mobile device, browser extension, or Gmail.
Access to Google chat through any of these, select a conversation to test, and type any of these codes to see the magic.
- Type ‘woot’ and you can see a yellow animated character that randomly appears on the chat window
- Type ‘yay!!’
- Hooray!
- woohoo or woo hoo
- happy birthday
- ha ha ha ha
- /ponies
- /ponystream
- /shydino
- /bikeshed
- /pitchforks
Each of these codes includes different animations on chat. They are funny and some of them are subjective like happy birthday.
Draw doodle
Need to demonstrate any structure of something while having a chat in a group? No problem, Gchat enables an option that will let you draw doodles and visualize your ideas on a whiteboard.
So, how do you do that?
Open a chat with someone you have done in Google chat, in the bottom right corner of the chatbox, there is a little camera icon. Hover your mouse over it, you can see a pencil icon which is the option for creating doodle on the Google chat platform.
Here you get all the necessary elements and tools to draw a doodle. Reminder, this feature only works at google chat updated version. If you have another version of google chat but someone sends you a doodle, you can’t see it. You will get a link through you will be able to see but can’t edit the doodle.
But if you are in the same version as the sender, you can see and edit the doodle and send it back to him.
Format texts
Formatting text is sometimes necessary especially when you are in serious discussion with room members. Google chat doesn’t have any formatting option directly in it but it has some hidden tricks to formatting text in conversation.
In Google chat, you can format texts by including specific tags in the text. For instance,
- If you want to make italic text, you have to include underscore (_) before and after the text
- To bold text, include an asterisk (*) before and after the chat
- Use tildes ~ to strike out a word
- Use ` to make inline code block without space and “` to create an outline code block with huge space
In this way, you can bold, italic, and use code blocks on your text in Google chat.
Create a poll
You may need to create a poll to collect an individual’s opinions on a specific issue. There is no option as effective as polls because it offers multiple options and allows people to respond to which one they like.
If you are using Google chat for business and marketing purposes, using polls will help you to engage potential consumers and employees.
However, creating a poll doesn’t come as a particular option like others. It is actually a chatbot that generates polls according to your command. If you want to create poll in the group conversation or room, you have to follow this.
- Open the conversation and type @Polly. The chatbot will open and ask permission to add Polly to the room
- Once you have added the bot in the chat room or group conversation, you will get a welcome message like this
After that, you have to input code to the bot which is also like a command on which the poll would create. For example, type @Polly “Title of the poll” “voting option1” “voting option2” and heat enter.
You can see a poll appear on your chat screen like this. Anyone in the conversation can respond and give answers in the poll easily.
Smart reply
Google chat has a smart reply option. it uses machine learning intelligence to provide the most likely responses and offers three different replies to choose from. Having a smart reply option enabled on google chat, you can focus more on work because you can quickly respond to the messages without typing.
However, if you don’t like smart reply suggestions, you can keep them disable from the settings option.
Direct call from computer
If you have google voice for your google workspace account, you can make a direct phone call from your computer with google chat.
To make a phone call, open the conversation with the person you want to call. At the top, you can see a phone call option. when you click on that, a list of the phone numbers will appear from your phone contacts, the person’s Google profile.
Select the number you want to call and the rest will do google voice.
Custom active status
In the top right corner of your google chat interface, you can see a green signal that means you are currently active in google chat.
Click on it and a drop down list will appear with more active status functions such as, ‘Do not disturb’ and ‘Away’.
It is absolutely a required option and truly says, I want this option included in all social media platforms. But you know Google is always one step ahead of others.
And in the google chat activity status, there is another option ‘Add a status’ which allows creating a custom status you want to make visible in your profile.
When you click on ‘Add a status’ it will generate some active status ‘Be right back ‘, ‘Commuting’, ‘Out sick’ and ‘vacationing’. More interesting is, you can set time with them like ‘Be right back – 30 minutes.
However, you can write your own status and set it on your profile.
Use the settings option
On the top right corner of your window, there are settings that include all the necessary adjustments options you need in google chat. Click on the setting and you will have a handful of options such as chat notification, email notification, blocked people, blocked rooms, smart reply to make your desired settings.
Read More:
WHAT IS GOOGLE CHAT AND SPECIALTY OF GOOGLE CHAT
HOW TO GET STARTED WITH GOOGLE CHAT
Finally, if you are a google chat user, these hidden tricks will help to enhance your chat experience. Google chat is a powerful instant messaging application that you can use freely and integrate for all types of communication requirements. You can use this on all your devices and it will synchronize automatically. It also enables video calling service through which you can make conferences with up to 250 participants. So, if you want to start using google chat, you should create a workspace account to get additional benefits. otherwise, you can carry on with its free version also.