Google To Shut Down Hangouts; Steps To Migrate To Google Chat

Google is shutting down its Hangouts chat app later this year. The search engine giant announced the news in a blog post and encouraged Hangout users to migrate to Google Chat as the app will stop working in November 2022. Active mobile users will see a screen asking them to upgrade from Hangouts to Chat in Gmail or the Chat app, said Google in its blog post.

If you use Hangouts via an extension on your PC/desktop, you will be asked to switch to Chat on the web or download the Chat web app. We recommend you do this within three weeks as Google has plans to start migrating people who use Hangouts in Gmail on the web to 'Chat' in Gmail by July 2022. According to Google, "Users will lose access to the Hangouts mobile app and can upgrade to Chat in Gmail or the Chat app".

The Hangouts web client will continue to be available until later this year and users will see an in-product notice at least a month before Hangouts on the web starts redirecting to Chat on the web. Google assured that the Hangouts conversations will automatically be migrated from Hangouts to Chat; however, some conversations or portions of conversations won't automatically migrate from Hangouts to Chat.

In such cases, you will receive an email from Google with more information expected around September 2022. In case you don't want your Hangouts data to disappear, you can take a backup using Google Takeout before the chat app no longer exists in November 2022. Here's how you can do this.

Steps To Migrate Data/Chats From Hangouts To Google Chat

1. Sign in to Google Takeout with your Google Hangouts account.
2. Select Hangouts and deselect the rest on the viewed screen.
3. Click Next Step.
4. Select 'One-time download' in the delivery method.
5. Choose the file type.
6. Click Export.

You will receive an email from Google informing you that a copy of your Hangouts conversations is being created. Moreover, you will also receive an email when the takeout process is complete. Once you receive the message from Google, simply download the file to preserve your Hangouts data. It is worth mentioning that active users of Hangouts will have access to all associated data through the web until at least October 2022.