14 DAY TRIAL // If you haven’t checked out your Gmail yet, you should know that Google has rolled out an update to help you see whether your best friends are online and available via Hangouts or not.
The new feature comes in the form of a tab at the bottom of the screen, which enables you to see the contacts. Furthermore, from the drop down menu next to each entry in the list, you can pick one of four options. The first one, which is new, allows you to pin a contact to the top. Then, you can choose to send an email, to start a video call or to hide a contact from the list.
You’ll get the same results if you click the right button on your mouse while hovering over a certain individual’s name.
Once you’ve put together the list of top pins, you’ll be able to see them at the top at all times and they’ll even be separated from the rest of the bunch by a very thin line.
“Starting today it's easier to see which of your chat buddies are currently online, thanks to a new tab in Hangouts in Gmail. In this new tab, friends who are online are shown first, followed by those who aren’t. Of course, you can still send your offline friends a message and they’ll get it the next time they check Hangouts on their computer, phone or tablet. Plus, you can also now pin your favorite contacts (you know, your mom, your BFFL, or your crush) to the top of your contact list,” writes the Gmail team in a Google+ post.
The company noted that the new features came following the requests from many users, so people should be pretty pleased with the update.
Of course, if you don’t see the update yet, you should know that it might take a few days before the roll out is complete. Also, if you haven’t started using Hangouts in Gmail yet, you can click the “Try the new Hangouts” under your chat settings to upgrade to the new version.
Now, it seems like there are only a few more features that people really want to get into Hangouts by borrowing them from the old Google Chat. One is the ability to set an invisible status so you can fly below the radar of your contacts whenever you wish it and to set up customized status messages. In Hangouts, all you can do is choose an emoji to express your mood, which is not really helpful if you want to prevent people from bugging you when you’re busy.
