Google Chat gets “Quick reactions” so you can spend less time picking emoji for replies

Google Chat, Google’s replacement for Hangouts, has added a lot of features that help it and its sub-feature, Spaces, replace things like Google+ or “Currents” for Enterprise. It’s a different philosophy and approach to social, and acts more as an intranet than an open social network. A year ago, the company added emoji reactions to chat messages, and now, those are becoming faster to slap onto replies in a chat space.

In a Workspace Updates post this week, Google announced that by hovering over any message, you’ll now see more than just the standard thread chat bubble icon. Instead, you’ll also see “Quick reactions”, which consist of commonly or recently used emoji that you can click immediately to show your support for someone’s ideas.

This is still accompanied by an emoji button which will call up the entire palette of emoticons, as well as the reply button, and the three dots “more” options menu that was always there. However, by showing a few emoji without having to click the icon to call up the entire set of graphics, you can save a little time, I guess.

Some of you may already see Quick reactions for your organization over the past few days, but it will continue to roll out to all workspace users, as well as those with G Suite legacy licenses, and even personal Google Accounts over the next two weeks.

Of course, this applies to Rapid Release domains, but those with Scheduled Release domains will need to wait until May 30, 2023 to begin seeing them, with a full rollout occurring over the course of two weeks after that date. If you’re using Chat for Android instead of the web, you’ll just need to press and hold a message in a conversation to see these emoji.