Of course, I still have to run Chrome just for a slow and terrible browser interface on the desktop. Which was a major annoyance (especially since for some reason using Safari extends battery life for a huge amount) that caused me to switch to Telegram.
Its integrated into gmail, even in Firefox, with the gtalk plugin.
I use KTP for the hangouts chat part, and then my gmail tab rings when people call me on it. Its suboptimal, and a huge usability loss from 5 years ago when Google wasn't pushing proprietary bullshit but instead had jingle, but it at least barely works still.
>especially since for some reason using Safari extends battery life for a huge amount
on a side note i see several people say this but using a 2015 mbp I don't really see this battery draining behavior. Can anyone point to benchmarks or has anyone actually done a real test on this assumption ?
I continue to be amazed that companies like Microsoft and Google are so bad at instant messaging that upstarts like Slack can eat their lunch with essentially hosted IRC and a pretty client.
Not so much an "upstart like Slack", more like "a giant pool of upstarts, the best of which happens to be Slack." When looking at it like this, it's easy to see why Microsoft and Google (or any big company for that matter) has trouble competing.
Companies that specialize in one thing will always trump those who have to spread their efforts along many areas. It's the difference between depth and breadth.
I hear what you are saying. The android app has horrible bugs and atrocious performance as an SMS client and Google Voice client. I am hopeful this release addresses those items.
Does it support WebRTC phone calling from the browser?
Hangouts annoys me for a number of reasons however. And the biggest one is the fact that Google used it as a pretense to kill their federated XMPP service. This literally cut more than a half of my contacts off (i.e. those who use Google), because they don't accept bugs for enabling server to server encryption anymore.
I don't remember being upset about Google messing up things more than that.
UDPATE: Nah, still no WebRTC. Hangouts - fail.
Hangouts needs the Google Talk plugin to make calls.
Hey there! So just to understand how you use your clients, you want something that can federate XMPP (so you can chat with everyone that you've chatted with beforehand), but also be able to escalate upwards to a WebRTC call?
* It's about time. My wife complains about getting random SMS messages that turn out to be replies to group texts. She started giving out her direct cell number instead of her Google Voice number because of this problem. Hopefully with this she'll be able to use Voice exclusively.
I've been dogfooding this for a couple weeks, and I am very happy to be able to say that that feature (finally!) works, at least for me. Used to drive me nuts.
Yes, and 90% of my contacts have been “away” 100% of the time for just as long. Presence information is useless, I’ve been ignoring it for years.
What is the problem you want to avoid? People interrupting you. This is much better solved with a client side option that you control, without relying on the other user’s judgment.
I really like the Do Not Disturb feature in iOS and OS X: it works for the entire system instead of a single program and I fully control it, it doesn’t depend on you interpreting my signal that I’m “busy”.
Send me whatever messages you want any time you want, if I can respond I will, if I don’t want to be interrupted my phone won't make a bleep no matter how hard you push.
Preemptive rebuttal: “the system can turn off notifications when I set myself as away” then why set away in the first place? It has no meaning other than “do not disturb me”.
This post is about the android app. How do you define "online" when you're on a phone with a data connection, an extremely common use case for this scenario? (Or rather, what makes someone "offline" here?)
Maybe it's better to track whether the user is busy or free-to-interrupt, which I think is what Google is already doing. (I believe there is also an option to broadcast if you're on your phone or your desktop, although I don't fully understand why it's that useful)
Edit: I looked up Google's documentation, and apparently they do indeed track Online/Offline in the hangouts app [1], but from what I understand, installing the android app with a data connection = online. I'm not sure what Offline means.
I guess the parent is asking for notifications about the Online/Offline change, which does not exist. (But again, if installing the app means you're always Online in hangouts, you won't get any notifications anyway)
Prior to TextSecure deprecating the encrypted SMS option, I used Voice+ (on Cyanogenmod) to send encrypted SMS over Google Voice.
Since that method has been deprecated, the trustworthiness of SMS is lacking, and Google's insistence on not providing a "native" SMS experience for Google Voice (for both Voice and Hangouts apps) is annoying.
I continue to be unable to use an alternative SMS app for ostensibly a SMS service (Google Voice), like I am able to with a hack like Voice+.
Using Hangouts forces me to use unencrypted messaging for Google chat, while also forcing me to be always online.
My current setup is Voice+ with Google Voice and TextSecure to provide encryption communications with other TextSecure users, along with SMS fallback for contacts who are not using TextSecure. I can continue to use TextSecure for Google Voice SMS, however, which is not possible in Lollipop or in any supported way via Google products on Android.
It is disappointing that the biggest reason that I cannot upgrade to Lollipop is due to Google locking users to either Voice or Hangouts for Google Voice SMS. (I really don't care to use multiple messengers for short messages if I can help it).
I'm also using Conversations for encrypted (OTR) messaging over Google chat -- who knows how long that will last. I could live with this if Google offered OTR (preferably) messaging natively from Google apps, but I am not comfortable talking in the clear, especially when it is so easy not to, by using non Google apps/platforms.
Perhaps this is all my fault for using Google Voice as my primary contact number - but that is specifically the use case sold to users - replace your public phone number (... so that we can harvest your conversations)!
Google doesn't make it easy to be private -- likely not a primary use case considered by Google here, but the result is wanting.
I CAN FINALLY GET MMS MESSAGES WITH MY GOOGLE VOICE NUMBER!
Sorry for the caps. But that's been mildly annoying for a long time, so its kind of exciting to finally have a complete messaging system on google voice.
MMS for photos and videos have been in google voice (when used via hangouts) for about a year[1]. The (still very exiting) new feature is support for group texts which piggyback on MMS. Previously incoming group texts would appear as SMS messages from each individual recipient and it was not possible to send messages to the entire group.
I just wish Hangouts would auto-archive Hangouts that I leave. The interface for "Archiving" all the hangouts that I left on the web, or via the browser extension is terrible, 4-5 clicks to archive each one. I keep the Android app installed only so that I can use it's multi-select and archive-all functionality.
I personally have moved on to Google Messenger for MMS. It's simpler and faster. I like the feature of being able to color-code my contacts in conversations too. It just makes it a lot easier to read through a group text that way.
Hangouts is cool and all, but I wish Google would just decide which app they are going to push and get on with it.
I don't think IMs and SMS/MMS texts should mix. Period. Leave the legacy stuff to its own apps, and we just move on to new stuff without having to support that legacy burden. It's exactly why I welcomed TextSecure killing the SMS integration (it was even more annoying that it was asking you for it by default, as Hangouts does, too).
They should just concentrate on making it work properly on android
The amount of times it thinks I'm in a call and I'm not is far too many. Or it doesn't dial. Or doesn't ring. And if turn the video on there's a good chance it'll crash so hard I'll have to force stop it.
Which is a shame as I really like hangouts
Also the sms part should be better integrated, why can't I view/send sms on my phone from gmail?
Can I actively control my visibility settings, as with every other IM client? Inability to control my own visibility makes Hangouts an absolute non-starter for me, and many other people that I talk to. Our only choice is to keep it turned off at all times. Which is a shame, because Google Chat used to be my go-to messaging client.
As long as it crashes less and makes their (woefully unstable) Chrome Boxes need to be re-imaged/restored less... I'll take it.
Hangouts is nice when it works but it's become something of a swear word at my work - even if it makes setting up a conference in a meeting room a lot easier.
> (iOS users recently got many of the same updates).
How is it that Google is still "iOS first." I mean, I love my iPhone and am happy that Google feels the need to update iOS apps before Android. But why? That's like Microsoft being OSX First, it just doesn't make any sense.
I sincerely hope they are fixing the mms integration. The default messaging apps can handle mms from my carrier, hangouts has never worked properly with my carrier for mms
It looks like some of the user experience ideas from Google Messenger have made their way to Google Hangouts. How long does Google plan on supporting two Android SMS/MMS apps?
I've been using Messenger and it's pretty nice. I especially like the ability to search through my messages, something that the Hangouts v4 screenshot doesn't show.
Does anyone else find that, the awfully slow, Hangouts app (on Mac?) randomly open every minimized window? If it wasn't integrated with gmail and we didn't have everyone in the company already using it, Hangouts would be the first product I'd move away from.
I wish they'd stop guzzling battery on iOS. On my iPhone, the two top background activity apps are Facebook and Hangouts, neither of which (sadly) I can actually get rid of since I use the first for work (seriously...) and the second to be reachable to Android users.
XMPP continues to work for Google Chat, so there may be better iOS Google Chat clients. Sorry, I haven't used any, so I can't offer any recommendations.
ChatSecure seems to offer OTR compatibility, so that may be a decent option:
[+] [-] izacus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aldo_MX|10 years ago|reply
Another example could be Authy.
[+] [-] bazzargh|10 years ago|reply
...currently out there in the beta update stream, shouldn't be far off now.
[+] [-] pkulak|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliverstorm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzleeper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zanny|10 years ago|reply
I use KTP for the hangouts chat part, and then my gmail tab rings when people call me on it. Its suboptimal, and a huge usability loss from 5 years ago when Google wasn't pushing proprietary bullshit but instead had jingle, but it at least barely works still.
[+] [-] angryasian|10 years ago|reply
on a side note i see several people say this but using a 2015 mbp I don't really see this battery draining behavior. Can anyone point to benchmarks or has anyone actually done a real test on this assumption ?
[+] [-] StavrosK|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandvm|10 years ago|reply
I continue to be amazed that companies like Microsoft and Google are so bad at instant messaging that upstarts like Slack can eat their lunch with essentially hosted IRC and a pretty client.
[+] [-] robbrit|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanp2k2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justlurkin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enraged_camel|10 years ago|reply
Companies that specialize in one thing will always trump those who have to spread their efforts along many areas. It's the difference between depth and breadth.
[+] [-] avolcano|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e40|10 years ago|reply
I would be seriously surprised if anyone at Google actually used this POS.
[+] [-] pgrote|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] realusername|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|10 years ago|reply
Hangouts annoys me for a number of reasons however. And the biggest one is the fact that Google used it as a pretense to kill their federated XMPP service. This literally cut more than a half of my contacts off (i.e. those who use Google), because they don't accept bugs for enabling server to server encryption anymore.
I don't remember being upset about Google messing up things more than that.
UDPATE: Nah, still no WebRTC. Hangouts - fail.
[+] [-] Nullabillity|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wsinks|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Osiris|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endtime|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zikes|10 years ago|reply
IMs have had those features for decades, and contrary to Google's narrow worldview not everybody is online and available 24/7.
[+] [-] micampe|10 years ago|reply
Yes, and 90% of my contacts have been “away” 100% of the time for just as long. Presence information is useless, I’ve been ignoring it for years.
What is the problem you want to avoid? People interrupting you. This is much better solved with a client side option that you control, without relying on the other user’s judgment.
I really like the Do Not Disturb feature in iOS and OS X: it works for the entire system instead of a single program and I fully control it, it doesn’t depend on you interpreting my signal that I’m “busy”.
Send me whatever messages you want any time you want, if I can respond I will, if I don’t want to be interrupted my phone won't make a bleep no matter how hard you push.
Preemptive rebuttal: “the system can turn off notifications when I set myself as away” then why set away in the first place? It has no meaning other than “do not disturb me”.
[+] [-] Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0|10 years ago|reply
Maybe it's better to track whether the user is busy or free-to-interrupt, which I think is what Google is already doing. (I believe there is also an option to broadcast if you're on your phone or your desktop, although I don't fully understand why it's that useful)
Edit: I looked up Google's documentation, and apparently they do indeed track Online/Offline in the hangouts app [1], but from what I understand, installing the android app with a data connection = online. I'm not sure what Offline means.
I guess the parent is asking for notifications about the Online/Offline change, which does not exist. (But again, if installing the app means you're always Online in hangouts, you won't get any notifications anyway)
[1] https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/3111918?hl=en
[+] [-] yoasif_|10 years ago|reply
Prior to TextSecure deprecating the encrypted SMS option, I used Voice+ (on Cyanogenmod) to send encrypted SMS over Google Voice.
Since that method has been deprecated, the trustworthiness of SMS is lacking, and Google's insistence on not providing a "native" SMS experience for Google Voice (for both Voice and Hangouts apps) is annoying.
I continue to be unable to use an alternative SMS app for ostensibly a SMS service (Google Voice), like I am able to with a hack like Voice+.
Using Hangouts forces me to use unencrypted messaging for Google chat, while also forcing me to be always online.
My current setup is Voice+ with Google Voice and TextSecure to provide encryption communications with other TextSecure users, along with SMS fallback for contacts who are not using TextSecure. I can continue to use TextSecure for Google Voice SMS, however, which is not possible in Lollipop or in any supported way via Google products on Android.
It is disappointing that the biggest reason that I cannot upgrade to Lollipop is due to Google locking users to either Voice or Hangouts for Google Voice SMS. (I really don't care to use multiple messengers for short messages if I can help it).
I'm also using Conversations for encrypted (OTR) messaging over Google chat -- who knows how long that will last. I could live with this if Google offered OTR (preferably) messaging natively from Google apps, but I am not comfortable talking in the clear, especially when it is so easy not to, by using non Google apps/platforms.
Perhaps this is all my fault for using Google Voice as my primary contact number - but that is specifically the use case sold to users - replace your public phone number (... so that we can harvest your conversations)!
Google doesn't make it easy to be private -- likely not a primary use case considered by Google here, but the result is wanting.
[+] [-] livingparadox|10 years ago|reply
Sorry for the caps. But that's been mildly annoying for a long time, so its kind of exciting to finally have a complete messaging system on google voice.
[+] [-] semiquaver|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://lifehacker.com/google-voice-gets-native-mms-support-b...
[+] [-] josteink|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rplnt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codebeaker|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aesthetics1|10 years ago|reply
Hangouts is cool and all, but I wish Google would just decide which app they are going to push and get on with it.
[+] [-] mtgx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mintplant|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbig4545|10 years ago|reply
The amount of times it thinks I'm in a call and I'm not is far too many. Or it doesn't dial. Or doesn't ring. And if turn the video on there's a good chance it'll crash so hard I'll have to force stop it.
Which is a shame as I really like hangouts
Also the sms part should be better integrated, why can't I view/send sms on my phone from gmail?
[+] [-] lytedev|10 years ago|reply
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/08/10/dreams-do-come-true-...
[+] [-] nkoren|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] abritinthebay|10 years ago|reply
Hangouts is nice when it works but it's become something of a swear word at my work - even if it makes setting up a conference in a meeting room a lot easier.
[+] [-] x0054|10 years ago|reply
How is it that Google is still "iOS first." I mean, I love my iPhone and am happy that Google feels the need to update iOS apps before Android. But why? That's like Microsoft being OSX First, it just doesn't make any sense.
[+] [-] Axsuul|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omouse|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingvelocity|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msujaws|10 years ago|reply
I've been using Messenger and it's pretty nice. I especially like the ability to search through my messages, something that the Hangouts v4 screenshot doesn't show.
[+] [-] verelo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarmo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yoasif_|10 years ago|reply
ChatSecure seems to offer OTR compatibility, so that may be a decent option:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chatsecure-encrypted-secure/...
and should be compatible with OTR Jabber clients on Android like Conversations.