Hangouts, available for Android and iOS, is not working for many

As reported a week ago, Google is now working on shutting the old Hangouts for free users. Many users are finding they can no longer use Hangouts on Android and iOS in the present.

The initial phase of this shutdown affects the older Hangouts mobile applications, which haven’t had any significant enhancements to features over the past few years, and were primarily unusable for the latest Google Play or App Store downloads in the past few months.

The launch of Hangouts will show the “It’s time for Chat in Gmail” prompt which acts as a mandatory upgrade for Android or iOS to access the specific Google Chat apps or the Gmail tab. After seeing this prompt, you will not access the classic Hangouts on mobile devices.

This isn’t the most significant issue for users because most messages were transferred into Chat. However:

…some conversations or portions of conversations won’t automatically migrate from Hangouts to Chat. We will email impacted users with more information around September 2022

This prompt has been seen on various gadgets, and Google accounts around the world this morning. The majority of people this week were in a position to view conversations and even send messages, but this is no anymore the situation.

Alongside Android and iOS, Google is similarly disabling the Hangouts Chrome desktop extension, and this month, the classic Hangouts will cease to function in Gmail’s web interface’s sidebar. Users are asked to utilize Chat within Gmail.com or the PWA (Progressive Web Application) on chat.domain.com.

You’ll still be able to utilize hangouts.domain.com until at the latest October. However, it will cease to function after that, and the only remaining feature of traditional hangouts is the option to download history or data through Google Takeout.