If you’ve ever been on a phone call and needed to jump to a couple of apps to find relevant information, then it jumping back to the call can sometimes be a hassle. It’s getting easier though with Google building a Chat Head style bubble notification that makes it easier to control your call.
The inclusion of a Chat Head style bubble is showing up in the Google Phone app (V17 for those playing at home), as found by 9to5Google. The Chat Head notification shows up when you hit the home or multi-tasking button to exit the familiar call interface screen. Once you’re on the home screen the bubble appears and can be moved, or interacted with simply by tapping on it.
Tapping on the bubble brings up four options: Back to Call – which takes you back to the call screen, Mute – which mutes the mic, Speaker – which turns the speaker on, and End Call – which, well, it hangs up the call. The bubble can be moved to the left or right of the screen if you want it out of the way while you look up information, or you can drag it to the bottom to either hide the bubble – or End the call.
The updated Google Phone app is rolling out to compatible phones now, mostly Pixel and Nexus phones, if you don’t have it through Google Play as yet, you can grab the APK to side-load it from APKMirror as well.
Anyone in Australia got this ‘chat heads’ feature to work in v17? When i leave the dialer during a call, I don’t get a chat head, just a notification like v16 and below.
I sure have. The screenshots in the article are from my phone.
If you’ve messed around with any of the system app settings for “display on top of other apps”, it won’t work if this is disabled. Should be on by default.