Source: Google
Over the years, Google Chat has evolved and expanded its capabilities, giving users the ability to communicate with each other using direct messages, group chats, and conversation spaces. While things can generally be pretty straightforward, there are times when it can become harder to follow conversations, especially when there are lots of users and messages in the same space. Thankfully, Google has introduced a new feature that will allow users to ‘quote a previous message when sending a reply’, which should bring better context to chats going forward.
The update was announced on the Google Workspace blog and if you’re not familiar with how this feature works, it will allow users to select a message, directly reply to it, and have the original message and the response show up together in the chat. You can see an example of this in the image below. No longer will users have to scroll through lines of text just to keep up with conversations. The new quote reply feature will bring important parts of conversations to the forefront, making it easier to keep up with chats when there are so many taking place.
Source: Google
Now, if any of the above sounds familiar, that’s because this feature has been present on most messaging services for quite some time. If you’ve ever used Slack, WhatsApp or Line, chances are you’ve encountered this feature before and most likely use it daily because it’s convenient. Despite being available on other platforms for years, we can still be glad that it has finally arrived to Google Chat because the quote reply really did revolutionize the way we have conversations in chat.
The feature will be available on the web and mobile for all Google Workspace, legacy G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, and personal accounts. The update is rolling out right now to those in the Rapid Release track and will begin rolling out on May 18 for those on the Scheduled Release domains. At the very latest, the feature should be live for everyone at the start of June.