Does anybody have *any* idea why the in-mail Gchat would abruptly stop showing my online presence to someone? I accidentally turned the stupid hangouts on the other day and when I turned it off, my mom couldn’t see me online anymore, and still can’t. This morning she tried sending me another invite to chat and it started not even letting her see my chats when I talked to her–it wouldn’t pop a window up.
Now I’ve turned the stupid hangouts back on and if I chat her, she can see it, but she still seems me as greyed out and can’t start a chat with me.
Does anybody have any idea what’s going on with it? My sister and she have been having the same problem for months and we’ve tried everything we can think of. Removing them both entirely from each other’s contacts and re-adding them fixed the problem for about an hour, apparently, but then it stopped working again.
(It is not that I have my status set to ‘not here’ or ‘offline’, fwiw.)
This might be the answer?
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chat/XQgzKUfQihg
Specifically: “I’ve found the solution to my problem. When I was using hangout, I unchecked “Notifications” for a few of my contacts I was chatting with because I didn’t want it to flicker on my tab in my browser since I was at work. Unbeknownst to me, when you uncheck “Notifications” it will also show you as invisible to the person you unchecked it on. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but if it’s a feature – maybe it should be explained more explicitly.”
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/chat/gchat$20always$20invisble/chat/tRgPuDyKxXU/KyYYOtdozt0J
and also how to check for this.
I bet anything that’s it, because I habitually turn all sound and other crap like that off, and when I’m in Hangouts there’s a slashed-through bell on Mom’s chat with me. I’ve set notifications back on and I’ll check when she gets home! Thank you!
It WORKED! Thank you SO MUCH!!!!!
Glad I could help. :)
See you at LonCon3!