We’re all about quick messaging these days, right? What used to be just a way to casually connect has turned into a full-blown communication tool, both for work and personal life. Google Chat is a great example, helping us chat with colleagues and friends.
Sometimes your chat window is like a ghost town, while other times it’s a total downpour of conversations. When things get busy, handling multiple chats at once is vital. Jumping between chats isn’t just a time suck, it can also lead to sending a message to the wrong person.
Good news! Google Chat has a cool option to pop chats out into their own windows.
What’s a Chat Pop-out?
The ‘Open a chat in a pop-out’ feature in Google Chat is incredibly useful when you’re juggling multiple conversations. It creates a smaller, separate window for each chat. You can keep one conversation in the main Google Chat window and have others running in pop-out windows. There’s just one catch: you can’t have the same conversation in both the main window and a pop-out. You’ve got to pick one or the other.
Just keep in mind this pop-out feature is only available on your computer, not on your phone.
How to Pop-out a Google Chat
First, open Google Chat on your computer. If you are already in a chat and want to pop-out another one, look at the left of your screen where the ‘Chats’ section is. Hover over the chat you want to pop out. You’ll see a little arrow pointing southeast on the bottom-right of the chat tile. This is the ‘Open in a pop-out’ button. Go ahead and click it.
The chat will immediately pop out into its own window.
To pop out more conversations, just repeat the process with any other chats you want to open separately. You’ll soon have multiple pop-out chat windows and another conversation running in the main window. This might mean the main window is hidden, however.
You can have as many chat pop-outs as your screen can handle, usually up to 5. It depends on whether you are full screen or have your window minimized. Generally, you can expect to have around 6 chats open at once: 5 as pop-outs and 1 in the main window.
To get back to the main window conversation, simply minimize all your pop-out windows. Click the minimize button in the top-right or just double-click the title bar. You can maximize the chat pop-out again by using the same steps.
How to Manage Pop-Outs
Method 1: Expand a Pop-out to Full Screen
If you need to bring a pop-out chat back to full screen, use the ‘Open chat in full screen’ button on the top right of the pop-out window which is indicated by a double-headed northeast-facing arrow.
The chat will then appear in the main Google Chat window and will no longer be a pop-out.
Method 2: Minimize a Full-Screen Chat Back to a Pop-out
If you want to minimize a full-screen chat back to a pop-out, click the ‘Exit full screen’ button, which is located at the top right of the conversation in the main Google Chat window.
The chat will instantly disappear from the main window and appear as a pop-out.