Google overhauled its Hangouts Chrome app with an entirely new interface and the new design is now live for all desktop Hangouts users.

Google's Hangouts for desktop received the recently overhauled design change that was rolled out in phases for Android users. The desktop app for Mac, Windows and Chromes encompasses identical Material Design style elements, such as a broad colorful header on the top and the floating action button for starting new hangout.

Continuing a trend that has been common for Google services for quite some time now, the UI has been overhauled to be similar to the Android version of the app. The update was announced in a post on Google+ by Googler Mayur Kamat, who noted that users on Windows, Linux as well as Chrome need to disable transparent mode under settings to be able to see all of the new changes, according to records on 9 To 5 Google.

The new UI looks rather elegant, however since some users may still prefer the old look, at least for now, the search engine giant has allowed users to switch back and forth between the different UI style at any point in time. Users, who haven't yet checked out the new interface, can leave things as is, as Google left the earlier version of UI in place by default, Android Headline noted.

How to check the new interface?

Open the hamburger menu button situated in the top left corner to access setting.
Scroll down to choose the "disable transparent UI."
This will close the app and restart it with the new UI.

It then shows a list of user's conversations in one panel next to the currently open conversation in a panel to the right, with everything in one single window contrary to having the chat heads style UI Hangouts had before.