Streamlining the user experience in Google Chat to help you find what you need much faster

What’s changing 

We recently introduced numerous enhancements across Google Chat, and today we’re excited to announce the general availability of three features highlighting a new integrated experience. 
The redesigned navigation panel brings direct messages and spaces together and introduces shortcuts, a new framework to help you stay on top of your messages. 
To reduce friction while navigating between messages, home helps you quickly catch up on any new activity across all conversations in a single location. Additionally, you can narrow down your view by filtering for unread messages. 

Mentions give you visibility into the messages addressed specifically to you. Within this single destination for important, actionable messages, you can see and navigate to the messages that @-mention you. 

In addition to these improvements to the user experience, we’re updating the icon for Google Chat over the coming weeks. The new icon has a cohesive look with other popular Workspace products and reflects the central role of business messaging and collaboration in Workspace. 

Who’s impacted 

End users 

Why you’d use it 

These features are designed to help you stay on top of the busy flow of communication and make it easier to prioritize and find the conversations that are most important to you. 

Additional details 

The direct message and spaces sections will be listed separately, but are scrollable and collapsable in one unified list. 
The list of messages where you have been @-mentioned are sorted by recency. 
Each row represents the message within the thread that mentions you. If you are mentioned multiple times in a conversation, each mention will show up as one row. Unread messages are highlighted in light blue and include a blue dot. Clicking on a message in the Home or Mentions view will bring you directly to the conversation or thread where you can respond. 

Getting started 

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. End users: These features will be ON by default. Visit the Help Center to learn how to use Google Chathow to get started with Google Chat and how to mention someone else in a message.

Rollout pace 

Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 9, 2023 Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on December 4, 2023 

Availability 

Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources