Download: Version 10 of Google Hangouts With Direct Share

Android wouldn’t be Android if it weren’t for a handful of core apps and experiences, many of them offered by Google themselves, and Hangouts has arguably become one of them. While there are many more users out there using Facebook’s WhatsApp messenger, Hangouts is one of the easiest ways to make a group video call as well as one of the less complicated ways to make international calls without the associated costs. Now, in the newly-released version 10 of the app, hangouts is finally getting support for a new core Android feature that launched with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Direct Share.

This new way of sharing images, links, videos or whatever else was implemented with Android Marshmallow, and basically makes it much easier to share whatever you want with your favorite contacts or your most-used apps. Previously, only contacts from an SMS app or WhatsApp would appear as frequent contacts, but with Hangouts version 10 installed, your contacts that you interact with most on Hangouts will now also appear there. This might not seem like a  huge update, and for all intents and purposes it isn’t, but it is good to finally see Google adding a core Android feature to one of their more popular apps out there. It does make you wonder just what took Google this long, but we suppose that there has to be a reason why it wasn’t rolled out any sooner.

As of writing, the Play Store is still listing the newest version of Hangouts as version 8.0, so it’s likely that a new, official changelog will hit the Play Store pretty soon. Until then however, users can download this new version of Hangouts right here. As with all Google updates, this can be installed over the top of your already existing version of Hangouts without issue, and for the majority of users, this change in adding Direct Share will simply make it quicker to send those links to funny YouTube videos and pictures of your pets to your friends on Hangouts. Direct Share, for those that are still on Android 5.0 Lollipop is a feature that should hit your device with your Marshmallow update.