Chat and reactions
Use live chat during a call and distinguish message delivery, unread messages, and retained history.
Use meeting chat for links, questions, and written details that support the conversation. Live message delivery and saved meeting history are separate: a message can reach participants without becoming a durable record.
Follow chat while focusing on the call
You can close the chat panel to make room for video or a screen share. Meet continues receiving messages while the panel is closed and tracks unread messages during that room session.
Reopening the panel shows messages received while it was hidden. This behavior applies while you remain in the call; it is not a promise to restore the live panel's messages after leaving or reloading.
Understand a send failure
Meet clears your draft after the message is sent to the room. If delivery fails, it shows a failure notice and keeps the draft so you can try again.
Before resending, check your connection and the visible conversation. Keep long notes in a separate document if you need an independently saved copy; the chat composer is not a document editor.
Distinguish delivery from retention
Regular meetings attempt to save chat for the organizer's history. Saving is separate from delivery to people currently in the call. A successful live send does not guarantee that the history copy was saved.
Keep messages within 4,000 characters if you need them saved to history. Meet allows 60 history-saving requests per minute from the same public network address. Several people on one shared network can contribute to that limit.
| Situation | During the call | After the call |
|---|---|---|
| Regular meeting, message delivered and saved | Connected participants receive the message | The organizer can find the saved message in history |
| Regular meeting, delivery succeeds but saving fails | Participants can still receive the message | The message may be absent from history |
| End-to-end encrypted meeting | Participants exchange live chat | Meet does not save chat for history search |
Use a separate shared document for decisions that need a durable record. Meeting history contains retained chat and attendance, not an audio transcript of everything said.
Participate without interrupting
Raise your hand to indicate that you want to speak, or use a reaction for a brief response. These signals support the live discussion; they are not a replacement for writing down an agreed action.
If you need to focus on a participant or presentation, use a local pin. Pinning changes your view, not who can send messages or speak.
Know who can review messages later
Managed meeting history belongs to the account that organized the meeting. Attending a call does not add that meeting to your own organizer history.
For encrypted meetings, missing chat history is expected. Encryption does not remove all meeting metadata: meeting and attendance records still have separate purposes. See Meeting privacy.