Smartphone users are forced to say goodbye to Hangouts for Android and iOS as it stops functioning. This was discovered last week after an announcement and no Android or iOS user can access Hangouts on their smartphone.
The shutdown affects the old Hangouts for Android and iOS, which hasn’t received any updates from the Big G and has been removed from the Google Play store downloads recently. Meanwhile, on trying to open the Hangouts app, you’re presented with an on-screen prompt that says “it’s time to chat in Gmail”.
The result of tapping on the prompt makes you access “dedicated Google Chat apps or the Gmail tab” on your Android and iOS, stopping you from using Hangouts on your device. However, there might be a possibility of your conversations migrating to Chat, although some portions might not.
Disabled Hangouts for Android and iOS has been noticed on most devices and while some users could still access it last week, that’s no longer the case. A statement talking about the transferring of conversations also explained that we might get more information by September. “…some conversations or portions of conversations won’t automatically migrate from Hangouts to Chat. We will email impacted users with more information around September 2022”.
Hangouts for Android and iOS to be replaced?
Not only is Hangouts for Android and iOS disabled but also Hangouts for Chrome. In addition, Hangouts will also lose its functionality on web Gmail’s sidebar. The replacements provided by the Big G are Chat in Gmail.com and Progressive Web app(PWA) in chat.google.com. That said, hangouts.google.com is still available but we don’t think it will be around for long.
