If you’re a casual user or a freelancer who spends hours sending and reading emails, you probably do it through Gmail. As Google’s primary email service, hundreds of millions of Gmail customers send billions of emails every day.
One of the advantages of being an official Google subsidiary means that it has integrated many of the tech giant’s other services, one of them being Hangouts. Hangouts is not popular among a good portion of the Gmail user base, as they find it intrusive. If you want to know how to remove, or at least hide, Hangouts from view, check out our handy guide.
What are “Hangouts”?
Google Hangouts is officially a “communications software product”; In layman’s terms, a chat app aimed at businesses, similar to Microsoft’s Teams. For many users, especially those who use Gmail for personal emails rather than anything business-related, Hangouts tends to be irritating. It takes up valuable email reading space without really providing anything to the user. Therefore, it is understandable that many want to get rid of it.
By appearing in the Gmail sidebar, you can see why it might be interfering. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple way to hide it from view so that your email reading or writing experience is not greatly hindered.
Very good, but how do I remove it?
The answer is very simple. Follow each step below and you won’t be seeing Hangouts for much longer.
- Go to your browser and sign in to your Google account, if you haven’t already and go to Gmail. Alternatively, you can use this link. here.
- Once you’re logged in, locate the small “gear” or settings button in the top right corner of the screen, near your profile photo and the calendar button.
- Click the gear and then click the “See all settings” menu from the drop-down selection.
- At the top bar of the menu that appears, locate the “Chat and Meet” option and then simply select “Off.”
- Finally, click “Save Changes” and let the page reload.
Once the page has loaded again, you’ll see your usual inbox, with a noticeable change at the bottom left where the Hangouts window was: it’s now gone!
Consequently, you just gained valuable screen real estate, which is even more worth it if you work on a smaller monitor. In those cases, you need as much free space as possible, and if sacrificing Hangouts is what it takes, then that’s a price most of us are willing to pay.
Additional space
As mentioned, most people want to delete Hangouts to gain more screen real estate, especially in crowded inboxes. That said, there are a few more things you can do to get the same results.
Display density
If you don’t really care about fancy-looking email labels or tags and just want to be able to see email titles at a glance, you can set the display density from the “Default” option to “Comfortable.” ” or “Compact”.
This convenient option will eliminate any unnecessary styling in your emails and make them easier to distinguish. However, some users may not notice much of a change.
The compact option will reduce the space taken up by a single email, allowing you a more concise overview of your inbox. Perfect for when you’re trying to stay organized.
Side panel
Like the left sidebar, which serves as a navigation buoy and takes you from folder to folder, the right side panel offers a few more optional functionalities. By default, you can access your calendar, as well as your Google Keep and Google Tasks apps, which, while useful for some, may just be a nuisance for the casual user.
The best part is that the panel is easily hidden from view, simply by clicking the little arrow in the bottom right corner of your inbox.
All you need to do is click on it and boom, you’ve gained about an inch of space. Some might say it’s not much, but it can make a difference.
Preview panel
This option may already be disabled, depending on some variables. But if you don’t turn off email previews, you can help eliminate even more clutter from your inbox.
Fortunately, like the previous two tips, this one is also very simple. To ensure that the preview pane is disabled, do the following:
- Go back to the “gear” or options menu at the top right, where we had previously disabled chat.
- After that, click on the “Inbox” section.
- Finally, make sure “Enable Reading Pane” is set to disabled in the menu that appears, like this:
And that’s it.
Say hello to a tidy inbox
Ready. This concludes our short but interesting guide to deleting Hangouts and gaining extra space in your Gmail inbox. As simple as it may be, sometimes these options are usually hidden under ten different menus, so it never hurts to consult an online guide to make sure.
