Google Chat's best feature this year is finally ready for everyone

How do you rank the best ways to remotely communicate with people? Do you put text messaging up in S tier? Would F tier be snail mail? Probably somewhere in the mid-to-high range on that breakdown would be voice messaging — maybe a little easier to express complicated thoughts with than a text, and certainly a lot more convenient than a live phone call. Google only got around to bringing voice message support to Chat back in March, and even then it was limited to paid Workspace users. Now that barrier to entry is finally coming down, as Google makes Chat voice messages available to all.

Leaving a voice message with Chat is super straightforward, and we really just wonder how it took Google this long to get around to implementing it. You just have to tap the new microphone icon to the right of your text entry field and record a message that will go out to the Chat group. Google’s even been delivering upgrades to the feature since it first arrived, like the automatic transcripts we saw become available a month ago. But even then, voice messages were limited to Workspace accounts.

We still haven’t spotted this on our own devices, but 9to5Google reports that voice message support is now actively rolling out to personal Google accounts, instead of just Workspace. Once you have access, you’ll see the “send message” arrow replaced by that very same microphone icon we saw come to business users already.

Google’s no stranger to introducing new features as premiums locked either behind paid subscriptions or tied to the purchase of the latest hardware — only to later show some grace and make them available to a much wider, non-paying group. But frankly, this one was a little odd to see follow that path, as the Chat of today is already so enterprise-oriented that we can’t imagine this drove any business. Still, we’re not going to complain about having access now — well, once it shows up for all our accounts, anyway. Check your own phone to see if you can now start sending Chat voice messages of your own.