Hangouts users, gather 'round. There's an important update that will likely make this the most popular messaging platform in the world. Ha, I kid! That ship has sailed long ago. But there is actually a small nifty update to Hangouts that will make it easier to catch up on active chats.

Now, when you open a conversation with lots of unread messages, you'll see a new floating button at the top to "Jump to last read" (first screenshot above). Tap it and Hangouts will automatically scroll up to the last message you read for context and you'll be able to see all the new unread messages below it (middle screenshot). And finally, if you're reading a conversation and new messages are delivered, you'll see another floating button to jump to the unread messages (third screenshot).

It's all very similar to the way many messaging apps, like WhatsApp, work and it's great help for group chats where you may step away for a few minutes and come back to dozens of unread messages.

The new buttons and layout are already visible for me in Hangouts 17.0.148298972, which is live on the Play Store or available on APK Mirror if you prefer the manual download route. It might take a couple of days though to show up for everyone.