Tips to work efficiently in chats & spaces

On this page

• Pin an important conversation
• Mark a message as read or unread
• Get a conversation summary in a space
• Hide or delete a chat conversation
• Send chat messages to your inbox
• Use apps in chat messages or spaces

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Pin an important conversation

If you want to keep track of an important conversation in a chat message or space, pin it to the top of your chat or spaces list. A red dot appears next to pinned conversations with unread messages.

 

 

Mark a message as read or unread

In a chat message or a space, you can mark messages unread to easily get back to important messages. You can also mark a message as read without opening a conversation.

 

 

Get a conversation summary in space

Stay updated on long, unread conversations in spaces you’re a member of by using conversation summary.

Important: Currently, conversation summaries only:

• Appear when necessary in conversations.
• Summarize conversations in English.
• Are available on Google Workspace accounts.

 

 

Hide or delete a chat conversation

You can hide or delete the history of a direct message conversation in Google Chat and Gmail. You can also delete a single message that you sent by mistake.

• Hide conversation—Removes your copy of a conversation. It doesn't remove the conversation from other participants' views. If you hide a conversation and then chat with that person or group again, your chat history reappears (if it's turned on).

  

• Delete conversation—Permanently deletes your copy of a conversation's history. It doesn't delete the conversation from other participants' history.

 

 

Send chat messages to your inbox

You can forward a message from Google Chat to your Gmail inbox. The email includes the last 4 messages in the conversation thread. Later, if you turn chat history off, the messages stay in your inbox. The email may take up to 2 minutes to appear in your inbox.

 

 

Use apps in chat messages or spaces

Available only if your organization allows adding apps to Chat. 

You can add apps to a chat message or space to have the app perform tasks for you. You can add apps provided by Google, such as Google Drive. Or add custom apps created for your organization. For details on creating custom apps, go to the Google Chat API documentation.