A simpler, faster way to use Hangouts on your desktop | Hacker News Reader

A simpler, faster way to use Hangouts on your desktop

chrome.blogspot.com

7 pointscjdulberger8 comments

I'm on OSX.

Occasionally when you click back to focus Chrome, your focus stays in Hangouts, then you can't use Chrome's keyboard shortcuts, as you are in Hangouts instead.

Otherwise, hopefully this works better than the old extension - when starting Chrome it kept not logging in without being disabled then renabled.

Also, why the big white box on start - couldn't that be the contact list?

I'm also on OSX.

I'm getting the focus issue as well (I get it sometimes with the old extension, but much more with this new one).

Also, there seems to be no notification at all when someone messages you. That makes it fairly useless as an IM app. At least it doesn't pop a full conversation up in front of you like the old extension did.

It also doesn't seem to support multiple accounts (the old one didn't, either).

Looking at the screenshots I think it's supposed to be transparent instead of the big white box. That's probably why OS X isn't listed as fully supported.

I don't really find this to be an improvement over the chrome extension in any way, it just doesn't seem like it's finished.

Why does this software feel so horribly unpolished?

This new version doesn't even work at all when you've set the chrome zoom standard to anything other than 100%.

We use Hangouts for team communication a lot, but the chrome extension is so unstable and has weird issues that we joke that it must have been built "by the best interns money can buy".

Sadly, besides Facebook Messenger, its the best cross device chat platform that isn't Hipchat and works with most of our clients that use Apps for Business.

Nothing against Chrome extensions, but I have yet to see an messaging application that competes with Pidgin. It's simple, beautiful, and perfect at what it does.

Unfortunately, Google doesn't permit Pidgin to use its current protocols. So while XMPP still works great for one-on-one chat, my group messages relegated to the Hangouts app. (As are video and voice, but that's much more understandable.) Which is odd, since XMPP supports multi-user chat.

I really like Hangouts for video chats, but I wish they'd allow me to outsource all text-based messaging to Pidgin. It's just a more elegant solution... and Google would still reap all the advertising information they can glean from my messages anyway.

I'm on windows, and It's terrible! I preferred the extension much more.

I have this terrible floating icon in the middle of my screen. It's as ugly as Facebook Messenger on Android.

In the settings you can disable "Always on top". But then it requires you 2 clicks to open the Hangouts app. One click on the Windows taskbar, and then one on the icon when it appears.

Stupid developers! How about keeping the OS the way it meant to be used, with the tasks inside the taskbar. Not floating windows everywhere.

Is there any way to have this auto-hide in some way?

alt-tab on osx closes current chat so you have to click it again, counterproductive, deleting/not using until its fixed.

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