Delete your Hangout message history
When you delete your Hangout history, it’ll be deleted from your Gmail and from Hangouts on all of your devices. Other people in the Hangout can still view the history.
Delete history for a conversation with one other person
You won't be able to recover your conversation's history after you delete it. If you want to see your history, you can see it as long as the history setting was on when the message was sent.
- Open Hangouts at hangouts.google.com or in Gmail.
- Select the person from the Hangouts list to open the conversation.
- At the top right of the conversation window, click Settings
.
- Select Delete Hangout.
- Confirm by clicking Delete.
.Delete history for a group conversation
Currently, there’s no way to delete the history for a group conversation and still stay in the group.
If you want to clear the history, you’ll need to leave the conversation completely. When you leave the conversation, your message history will be deleted for only you: others in the group will still see your message history. Also, you’ll no longer receive new message notifications.
- Open Hangouts at hangouts.google.com or in Gmail.
- Select the group from the Hangouts list to open the conversation.
- At the top of the group window, click Settings
- Click Leave.
- Confirm by clicking Leave.
See deleted history
- Individual conversation: You can’t see deleted messages from a conversation you had with only one other person.
- Group conversation: To see the history of a group conversation, have someone who is still in the Hangout add you back.
Your Hangout history may be saved as several email threads. Deleting your message history will delete all email threads associated with that Hangout. Deleted messages won’t be stored in your Trash folder.
Moving messages to the trash in Gmail:Your Hangout may be stored as a series of email threads within Gmail. Moving the threads to the trash will only remove the messages from your Gmail mailbox. Moving the email threads won’t delete the messages from the Hangout window or on the Hangouts mobile app.
Related links
Megan is a Hangouts expert and the author of this help page. Help her improve this article by leaving feedback below.