Chat in Zoom
While Zoom may seem all about video, the service has a chat system that works both within meetings and separately, depending on how you have it configured.
Zoom’s chat is fairly primitive compared to modern instant messaging systems, like WhatsApp, Skype, and Apple’s Messages, and channel-based group communication tools, such as Slack and Teams. It gets the job done during a meeting, but it’s unlikely to be a tool of choice outside it unless you, your company, or your school has or offers no better alternative.
Chat in a Meeting
Zoom features chat alongside audio and video as one of the ways to communicate with the host and among members during a meeting.
To get started with Chat in a meeting, click the Chat icon at the bottom of a desktop or web app, or tap the More 
icon and tap Chat.
From a menu, you can select to whom your messages are sent, whether that’s everyone in a meeting or individuals (Figure 74). Zoom doesn’t let you set up groups to talk to, however. Enter a message and press Return (desktop) or tap Send (mobile).
Zoom shows by default the profile pictures or “avatars” of meeting participants. People without photos or images appear as a set of initials. You can disable showing your image. Go to Settings > General in desktop apps or Meeting Settings in mobile clients: turn off “Show user profile icon next to in-meeting chat messages.” Admins can also disable profile icons, so you may not see them at all.
As part of Zoom’s continued efforts on privacy and security, note the thin box at the bottom of Figure 74. The badge overlaying the figure indicates the chat is encrypted. Clicking “Who can see your messages? Recording On” produces a detailed disclosure (Figure 75). Read Use Resulting Audio and Video for more details on the care that needs to be taken.
When you receive a message and are not displaying the Chat view in your app, a brief overlay appears showing the sender and message, which then fades. A red badge with the number of missed chat messages appears over the Chat icon in desktop and web apps and on the More icon in mobile apps.
All messages appear in a single Chat stream. A label above each message that indicates whether it was sent to you individually or if it was sent to the whole group.
You can also select any member’s name in the Participants list to highlight them or open the Chat view. Select yourself in the desktop app, and Chat opens to Everyone as the destination.
Participants can also send files in a desktop app by clicking the file 
icon and selecting a document (Figure 76). Depending on account settings, the file icon may reveal a number of cloud services in addition to Your Computer on desktop apps. Only desktop app users can send or receive these files, which they click to download.
Desktop and web app participants can also click the emoji 
icon to select those special symbols to insert into the text of a message.
Chat Outside a Meeting
Zoom also offers users the option of chatting directly from their mobile or desktop apps without a meeting in progress.
You can start a new chat in any Zoom desktop or mobile app from the Chat tab or the Contacts tab, which are reachable via the home screen in mobile apps and the main Zoom window in desktop apps.
Did you know you had a contacts list in Zoom? Well, you do! It’s found in the row of icons at the bottom of a mobile app and in the row of icons at the top of a desktop app. Let’s examine that first before moving on to chatting with contacts,
Find and Manage Contacts
Zoom’s contacts manager is useful to most people only if they are in an organization that is using Zoom’s integration to tie in an existing directory. Otherwise, you have to add and manage contacts individually entirely within Zoom apps.
You manage contacts in their own tab in the mobile and desktop apps, but you can’t access them from Zoom’s website, and there’s no way to bulk import contacts. Zoom offers some sync options, but you can only see those sync entries in desktop apps! On a mobile app, you can opt to view your device’s list of contacts.
Depending on the kind of account you have, you add and manage other people in your contacts in the following ways:
Contacts list (all tiers of accounts): Add anyone by email address to your contacts list and, if they have a registered Zoom One account, they receive an invitation that they can accept. (You can also accept an invitation to be someone else’s contact.)
Internal users (paid accounts): Your contacts list includes all the users connected to the same Zoom One account as well as all the accounts linked together into what Zoom calls an “organization”: a collectively managed group of paid accounts.
Domain users (Business, Enterprise, and Education): With these account tiers, an administrator can register a domain with Zoom, and all users with Zoom One accounts that are registered to email addresses in that domain are prompted to be added to other domain holders’ contact lists. An administrator can also disable the automatic prompt.
Chat with Contacts
In a desktop app, use the Chat tab, which organizes groups of messages along the left side. In a mobile app, tap the Meet & Chat icon, and recent chats are shown below meeting icons.
You can create a chat in this view in either kind of app by clicking the pencil 
icon in a mobile app or the plus 
sign next to the Recents label and selecting New Chat. You can then add participants. You can also find a contact in the Contacts list, select their entry, and click or tap Chat.
Zoom limits whom you can contact via Chat. You can add people already registered with their email address in Zoom via the Contacts section as noted above for making channels. In desktop and mobile apps, click or tap the + above Contacts and Channels and select Invite a Zoom Contact. Zoom shows a dialog that reads, inaccurately, Invite to Zoom as it only contacts registered Zoom users. If the other party accepts, they appear in your Contacts list.
While you can chat one-on-one, you can also create persistent group chats, called channels, which are akin to group instant messaging:
Desktop app: In the Chat view, click the + next to the Channels label and choose Create a Channel. (You can also join a public channel here by clicking Join a Channel.)
Mobile app: In the Contacts view, click the + and then tap Create a New Channel. (You can also tap Join a Public Channel to become part of an existing public one.)
Now name the channel. If your account is connected to an organization, you can opt to make the channel private or public: the former requires an invitation, while the latter can be found by any member of the organization. You can also opt to invite people who are only in your organization to the chat or pick among all your contacts.
This persistent channel remains available for chatting from now on, unless you choose to delete it. Channels appear in the Meet & Chat view in a mobile app and in the Chat view in a desktop app.