Recently, Google has rebranded “Hangouts Chat” and “Hangouts Meet” as Google Chat and Google Meet. Google Chat has a Progressive Web App available. It received Dark mode support for the web version (chat.google.com) as well as PWA App. Like other Web apps, you can now configure Google Chat to run automatically when the computer starts from Chrome, Microsoft Edge browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Automatically open Google Chat standalone App on Windows Startup
In Chrome:
- Sign in to your Google Account
- Visit chat.Google.com
- Click on the install icon in the address bar.
- Head to chrome://apps page
- Right-click on Google Chat and select “start app when you sign in“, done.
Note: You should be using Chrome 73 or higher, before running the Google Chat standalone app on your computer:
After this, at the next start of the system, the Chat Standalone App window opens on its own.
Do note, the above feature does not work on Chrome OS.
If you don’t want this happening, right-click on App and uncheck” Start app when you sign in”.
You need to toggle that option to run or stop any App from opening at startup.
For Microsoft Edge,
- Follow the above steps from 1 to 2, when the “Try chat desktop app” notification appears click “install”. You can install App by clicking the icon in the location bar also.
- Head to edge://apps page or click on menu icon > Apps > Manage Apps
- Right-click on Google Chat and select “Start App when you sign in”
The ability to load App when you sign in to a computer is available to all web apps installed in Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. You should be visiting chrome://apps and edge://apps pages in respective browsers to configure that option.
