No, I don't want to Hangout!

June 17, 2017 8:04 AM

Asking for a friend: is there any way to get Hangouts to look like the old Gchat? Details inside.

So Google is shutting down gchat and replacing with Hangouts at the end of this month, which is great unless you're my friend and the Hangouts IM-esque layout is Not something you can have at work. Is there any way (add-on, setting, whatever) she can get Hangouts to look like Gchat (basically, like this)? TIA!

posted by Tamanna to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

If you install the Chrome Hangouts Extension there's a little pop out arrow at the top of the chat box that makes it a single window for a person.
posted by gregr at 10:17 AM on June 17, 2017

Response by poster: Sadly, gregr, it doesn't fix her problem, which is that she doesn't want userpics to be shown, just text.
posted by Tamanna at 10:50 AM on June 17, 2017

You want the "Use dense roster" setting. Click the little down arrow by your Icon/username in the chat/hangout area. Although that only fixes the way your contacts are displayed.
posted by goatdog at 5:45 PM on June 17, 2017

If it's just one on one chats, pidgin should still work for it. You may also need the purple hangouts plugin to make it work. Here's a guide that I found, and looks complete, but I have not tested it myself.
posted by deezil at 6:11 AM on June 19, 2017

Follow up: I set up purple hangouts last night. I rescind my recommendation of that because it's tricky and slightly terrible to do if you're not tech inclined.
posted by deezil at 10:48 AM on June 20, 2017