Google Hangouts has allowed its users to participate in text, voice and video chats since May 2013, when Google first launched the unified communications platform.
But that doesn't mean it floats everyone's boat. Even though the free chat service is useful and convenient, it could use some tweaks to make it even better.
Various upgrades and new features could be extremely beneficial to the Google Hangouts community. Below, we've rounded up a list of seven things we'd like to change about Google Hangouts.
1. Online statuses
Currently, Google Hangouts allows us to see whether someone is online or not. If a user is online, a green circle appears over his or her profile picture, and in a given chat window there is a thin green line below the contact's name. These are the only indications that our contact may be around, and at first glance, it isn't very noticeable.
As a solution, we'd like to add a status feature to make people aware that we're online, away, idle, busy or offline. If we're away from the keyboard, we should be able to create a custom away message, such as "I'm out to lunch" or "I'm in a meeting" â€" something Gchat used to allow.
2. Improve notifications
When you miss a message and log into Gmail, the missed message becomes bold. We'd like to receive a noticeable alert or have the chat pop-up when we log into Gmail.
When someone messages you while you're offline, the missed message becomes bold in your Hangouts list. The bold text, which is the same font size as text that has been read, blends in with the rest of your Google Hangout chats on the side of your Gmail account. By the time you see the message, it's probably old news.
Instead, we'd like to see the conversation pop up, or send a noticeable alert or email so we know right away what we missed.
On that note, if you answer a message on one device, the alert should automatically disappear on other devices. Notifications need to be kept consistent across all platforms when possible.
3. Search contacts within our networks
If we search for "John Smith," our results show every single person named John Smith, ever.
Google Hangouts' search feature could using some tweaking. If we search for "John Smith," our results show every single person named John Smith within the Google interface. Instead of displaying a global contact list, we'd like to have a built-in search tool to find people within our organization, contacts or Google+ Circles.
4. Increase number of participants allowed in a Hangout
Currently, Google Hangouts video calls are limited to 10 video conference active participants. If you activate Google+ premium features, the limit increases to 15.
But to fully use Google Hangouts as a way to conduct team meetings, webinars, press conferences and more with people across the world, the limit should be increased anywhere to about 30 to 50 people.
5. Drag and drop files to conversations
Rather than clicking on the camera icon and waiting for this pop-up window to load, dropping files directly into our conversations would be more efficient.
Image: Screenshot Kyli Singh
A drag-and-drop feature would be an efficient way to share photos, videos and documents. Rather than clicking the camera icon, waiting for a pop-up to load so you can select or drag files, dropping the file directly into the conversation â€" similar to the feature in Gmail â€" would be useful and save users time.
6. Enlarge or full-screen windows when sharing screens
When sharing your screen with others, it can be difficult to see. We'd like to enlarge or make the window go full-screen to fill up the wasted black space in the background.
Image: Screenshot Kyli Singh
When sharing your screen with others, it can be difficult to see what exactly is being shared. Your first thought is to take the document or browser full-screen, but that doesn't do much.
The size of the window stays the same and there is a lot of wasted black space in the background (see screenshot above). Without going into presentation mode in PowerPoint, presenting documents, slideshows or websites can be a pain to view.
We'd love to see an option that will allow us to enlarge or full-screen windows being shared.
7. Easily perform searches through chat logs
Searching through your message history on Google Hangouts isn't very intuitive.
To search for chat logs in Gmail, you can use the search bar at the top to type in the keywords you're looking for â€" but by default, your results will be a mix of emails and chats. To limit your results to chats only, you have to type in label:chat [search term here].
We'd like to see an easier way to search through our chats, so we can pinpoint important information that our other messages buried.
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