New Gmail adding support for editing Google Slides with side-by-side Chat

Abner Li | Jul 23 2021 - 1:17 pm PT

As of last month, all personal Google Accounts can enable the new Gmail that supports Chat and Rooms. The latter aspect, which will soon be renamed to “Spaces,” allows for large-scale productivity. Gmail now supports opening a Google Slides presentation directly to allow for multitasking with Chat.

Since launch, Gmail Rooms have only supported opening and editing Google Docs or Sheets for a side-by-side experience where you get the document next to a chat column. It allows you to write in a document or work with a spreadsheet while talking to other people in a conversation with persistent history (compared to the built-in conversations when you open Docs in a dedicated tab).

Google is now in the process of rolling out side-by-side Slides support in the new Gmail. For whatever reason, the company did not show the “Open in chat” button on document previews and tapping Slides always opened a new browser window like before.

By enabling you and your collaborators to directly edit presentations without leaving Chat, we hope to make it easier to transform your ideas into impact.

Google Slides next to Chat in the new Gmail started rolling out on Wednesday and will be fully available in the coming weeks. For most people, group editing a presentation will probably be the next most useful thing after documents. It’s somewhat interesting that Sheets support rolled out first.