Fast fix - block your *unwanted* contacts from Google Chat

If you're like me, there may be several contacts that appear in your Google chat that you probably would never dream of emailing again, let alone having a late night chat with. Well the good news is you don't have to live with their names staring at you taking up desirable real estate screen space on your Gmail page. Here's how you can get rid of them in the good, non literal way.

Click on Contacts on the left side of your Google page.

Then, select the person you'd like to block. When you click on their name a window will open and you will see a "Show in Chat List" drop down menu. You can select from Auto, Always, Never, and Block.




Since in this instance, I'm cleaning out my chat list, I would select Block for this contact, and poof, they will automagically disappear from my Chat list. If you make a mistake or you want to put them back on your list, you can just select their name and then click on Auto or Always to get them back on the chat list. Blocked users can't see when you're signed in to Google Talk, and you won't see their status in your Friends list, either. (No offense Leonie, BFF)!

If you don't want Gmail to automatically enable chat privileges with your contacts you can go to Settings

Then click on Chat,
And select the "Only allow people I've explicitly approved to chat" option. Make sure to click Save changes to ensure your new settings are saved. Voila. You're back in the driver's seat.

Tags: Block contacts from Google Chat, BlockContactsFromGoogleChat, Google chat, Google chat list, google talk, GoogleChat, GoogleChatList, GoogleTalk