Gmail to come up with more chat icons for Google chat and spaces for Android

Gmail for Android is getting a new update that will replace the status bar icons for alerts from Google’s Chat and Spaces services. With Google Hangouts approaching its end of life, this is a new feature that further differentiates the two chat systems. Chat is the company’s primary messaging software, while Spaces is a Slack-like rival for chatting with bigger groups. Before this update, both the icons for the chat and spaces looked the same. Each would display you a message bubble filled in with an empty one behind it. That is no longer the case, and chat will henceforth display only an empty single message bubble. At the moment, we’ve only seen these new status bar icons on a single Android device running version 2022.02.20.x of Gmail. It’s not yet widely rolled out, while the standalone Google Chat app has yet to be updated. This comes as Gmail for IOS this month will show the Chat sender’s profile photo going forward for improved glanceability.