Google Chat is finally giving you the ability to hyperlink text in your messages

Google Chat may not have launched with many of the same standard features as its competitors, but it’s slowly started added them over time – a Google staple for the development pipeline.

Now, over on the Google Workspace Updates blog, Google announced that it’s finally adding the ability to let you link text in your Chat messages. You heard that right – in addition to receiving rich text editing (which is slowly rolling out), highlighting text and hyperlinking it will soon be a cinch.

As you’d expect, a link preview complete with a thumbnail pops up in the compose box and gets sent over to the recipient, making it much easier to click than a blue line of text. However, this preview may only appear if you’re linking a Google Doc, Sheet, Slide, or Gmail URL, though I hope it’s also for external links.

For those with a Rapid Release Domain, the update is rolling out already, and will occur over the next week and a half. Anyone with a Scheduled Release domain will have to wait a bit, as the rollout begins on August 1, 2023. I’m happy to report that this is going out to absolutely everyone across all Google Accounts, paid or free.