Google just introduced video chat capabilities to their already famous Gmail Chat. If you are an active user of Gmail you must have noticed an alert at the top of your Gmail page indicating the arrival of video chat.

You can click on the “New! Video chat” link to learn more about the new video chat capabilities of Gmail chat. Here is a video that you can watch to get started or you can follow the article below to get started with using video chat in Gmail chat.

Step-1:

You need a plugin installed to make use of the video chat capabilities. When you click on the “New! Video chat” link or if you click on this link you’d arrive at a page where you can see a big bold button “Install voice and video chat” button. It’s just a one time installation and so go ahead and click on the button to install the plugin.

Step-2:

“Gmail voice and video chat Installer” will install the plugin and once installed will acknowledge with the dialog below.

Step-3:

Once the plugin is installed, you’ll see a green color camera icon in front of your contact’s name if they have a camera attached to their computer and capable of doing a video chat.

Once you click on the contact’s name you’ll now see a “Video & more” tab. When you click on it you’ll see a menu option “Invite <name> to voice/video chat”. Click on that menu option and Gmail will send an invitation asking the contact to join-in a video chat.

You can also get to the Video chat by clicking on “Video & more” menu at the bottom of the Gmail chat window. You can click on the “Invite <name> to voice/video chat” menu option to start your video conversation.

Enjoy the new Gmail Video Chat and if you have any questions regarding this please make sure to ask us in comments.