What is yakyak?

YakYak is a standalone desktop app for Google Hangouts. Instead of keeping your chat conversations buried in a browser tab alongside everything else you're working on, it gives you a dedicated window for messaging, similar to how you might use a separate email application rather than always checking your inbox through a web browser. The app handles all the core chat functionality you'd expect: sending and receiving messages, managing conversations, getting desktop notifications, and sharing images via drag-and-drop or copy-paste. It also includes extras like typing indicators, conversation history scrollback, alternative color schemes, and the ability to launch video/audio calls directly in Chrome. On the technical side, it's built using Electron (a tool for making desktop apps with web technologies) and connects to Hangouts through a separate library that speaks Hangouts' protocol directly. This tool is for people who rely on Google Hangouts for communication but want a more focused, app-like experience. If you're tired of hunting for the right browser tab every time a message comes in, or if you'd prefer your chat app behave like a native desktop program with proper notifications and window management, this solves that problem. It's especially handy for office workers or teams that live in Hangouts all day and want their conversations accessible with a single click. The project is open source, with prebuilt versions available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It's worth noting that it's a community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Google. It relies on a third-party library to talk to Hangouts behind the scenes, which means it could be affected if Google changes how their service works under the hood. The codebase is written in CoffeeScript, a language that compiles to JavaScript, and the project actively welcomes bug reports and contributions from users.