Google's laying Hangouts, the company's chat app to rest and replace it with a new messaging app. Hangouts was on the chopping block since 2019 and is set to be replaced with Google Chat. Since then, the company began prompting folks to migrate to the new platform.
If you're a long-time Hangouts user, it would be wise to download your data for future reference. Google's stated that most of your data will seamlessly move over to Google Chat. However, some portions of conversations could be lost in the data transfer. So why leave it up to Google to potentially lose essential pieces of your important conversations with friends, family, or business colleagues?
Using Google Takeout, you can easily export and download your data ensuring you keep the whole of your communications data intact.
How it's done
On your device, head to Google Takeout on the web.
Click Deselect all at the top since we only want to export Hangouts data.
Scroll down until you see Google Hangouts. Check the box to the right of it.
Click or tap Next Step.
Choose your file format from the drop-down menu as well as the max size per file.
Click or tap Create export and that is pretty much it. Google warns you this could take hours so it's best to just go about your daily business while the file is created. Once you get back from checking email, browsing sales, or reading the latest celebrity gossip, you can periodically check-in to see if your file is ready to export and be downloaded. When it is, just click Download and you're done.
Via 9To5Google
