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I love that in Google Hangouts chat, default chat app on Android phone, there is no search capability.

I keep using it because I'm assuming they will add it eventually. I still find the Gmail+chat+hangout combo to be extremely robust and easy -- I just don't know why it isn't supported.




You can export your Hangouts chat history on takeout.google.com. The resulting Hangsouts.json file is human-readable but not fun to read. I have a one-liner to convert it into something nicer, but it doesn't resolve user names and you need to figure out the conversation ID you want to export yourself.

    jq -c '.conversations[] | select(.conversation.conversation_id.id == "YOUNEEDTOFILLTHISINYOURSELF") | .events[] | [(.timestamp | tonumber / 1000000 + (9*3600)| strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S (%a)")), .sender_id.gaia_id, [.chat_message.message_content.segment[]?.text], .chat_message.message_content.attachment[]?.embed_item?.plus_photo?.url?]' Hangouts.json | sort > foo.log
When you open Hangouts.json, you'll see that every conversation has something like this at the beginning:

    "conversation_id": { "id": "BASE64-LIKE_STRING" }
This BASE64-LIKE_STRING belongs into the YOUNEEDTOFILLTHISINYOURSELF placeholder.


Hangouts conversations are archived in your gmail, you could search there.


You didn't miss that it's about to get killed right? I've been an avid user of Google Hangouts. I wonder what will I use instead.


Wait, the chats are getting killed? Or the video? Or is it getting renamed?

Super confused.


I found out about it on https://killedbygoogle.com/ just now. However, after double-checking, apparently it's some G Suite Hangouts variant that's getting killed: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/08/updates-to-hang...


The new version of Chat has a search functionality so you'll likely get it when the transition's done.




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