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Here are some Google Chat and Hangouts tricks you should check out

Published Dec 12th, 2014 6:00PM EST
Google Chat and Hangouts Tricks

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Whether you only use Google Hangouts on occasion or it’s your primary means of online communication, there are probably a few tips and tricks within Google’s popular platform that you haven’t seen. Business Insider published a feature on Friday pointing out several of these tricks, from undocumented emoji to simplified language translation.

READ MORE: Here are some essential Google search tricks you may never have heard of

Here are a few of the highlights:

  1. If you haven’t yet, be sure to upgrade from Google Chat to Google Hangouts. You can do this by clicking your photo icon in Gmail and selecting “Try the new Hangouts.”
  2. Once you’re updated you’ll have access to a few new toys, including a ton of new emoji and the ability to send photos and draw pictures within the chat box.
  3. Want to spice up the conversation? Try putting asterisks on either side of a word to make it bold, underscores to italicize it and dashes to strike-through it.
  4. You can also message one of Google’s chat bots for a quick translation. You can find the full list of bots here on Google’s support page.

For more fun and useful tricks, be sure to check out Business Insider’s article at the source link below.

Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.