Google Plus – Access Old Google+ Hangout from Web Browser

It appears that chat/hangout messages are auto-archived in Gmail afterall - providing you don't have any filters set on the user you are chatting with! (This sounds like a bug if you ask me!)

I previously had a filter set on this particular user that simply prevented any emails from that user being seen as spam - but this was apparently enough to prevent all hangout messages from that user being archived. I had, however, already deleted this filter - but it appears to have taken some time for the system to catch up, since I was still getting hangout messages in my inbox after I had initially deleted the filter.

Thanks to Grzegorz for help in diagnosing this.

According to the Google support pages, you should check 4 items to be sure.

• Ensure your notifications are enabled. (Which you already said you have checked).
• Be sure you are NOT using Flashblock. If you are using Flashblock you need to adjust your settings.
  1. Open Firefox.
  2. From the Tools menu, select Add-ons and Extensions.
  3. Go to Flashblock and click Preferences on the right side.
  4. Enter mail.google.com under Whitelist for Gmail.
  5. Enter www.orkut.com under Whitelist for orkut.
  6. Click OK, and refresh your browser.
• Be sure that your speakers are not muted or your volume is very low.
• Be sure that you do not have any ad/popup blockers blocking the Hangouts page (Disable for plus.google.com pages.)
• Ensure you have Flash and Shockwave enabled. If you go to http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/welcome you can verify that flash is installed and working. (fyi: On my system I had Shockwave installed, but it did not work correctly until I did a reinstall.)

Also there is a known limitation with Hangout in the Windows 8 style interface, however, if you are running Hangouts from Desktop mode this should not be a problem.

Beyond this as far as I have been able to determine this is a limitation of the browser based version of hangouts (GMail, Google+, etc.). Each time I tested this implementation the only time I got any noticeable notification was if I already had a chat started and in some way active. New chats and messages sent when Window was not the active window we not present.

However, I did try the same after installing the Google Apps version. Since this version acts like a normal installed messaging client it was able to pop the chat box up and able to generate active system alert sounds.

Until Google finds a better method for the browser based versions of hangouts you may wish to install the apps version by going to the Hangouts homepage and selecting the Computers option for installation.