You can now quickly invite people to a Hangouts group chat with unique links

After picking up new updates on both Android and iOS earlier this week, Google Hangouts is now picking up a new feature for group chats — the ability to join via a unique link…

Creating a group chat on Google Hangouts previously required a user to invite users one by one into the chat. It wasn’t hard by any means, but the ability to send a simple link out to anyone who might want to join is certainly easier, not to mention voluntary for those joining.

This feature will need to be enabled on a per chat basis with the shareable link found within that chat’s settings menu. You’ll be able to disable the ability for new users to join from that link at any time as well. This functionality is rolling out to all platforms supported by Hangouts “over the new few days”.

Joining by link is rolling out on all platforms starting today, so you should see this available on your device over the next few days. It will now be easier than ever to bring the right people together.

Along with this, Google is also adding the ability to search for specific group chats by their title within Hangouts. Personally this has always seemed like a bit of an oversight, so it’s great to finally see the functionality added. Google says this functionality is available now on the latest Hangouts for Android update and will roll out to iOS soon.