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I know that 32-bit apps will not work on MacOS Catalina. Unfortunately, I use Hangouts very often and the plugin requires the use of a 32-bit app.

As far as you know, is there the possibility to make Hangouts work on Catalina?

Thank you so much in advance.

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    Hangouts will work without the plugin in most any browser - just head to hangouts.google.com on your computer - have you tried this ?
    – Udhy
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 11:22
  • Ok, thanks, but are there any differences? Screen sharing, etc., does everything work the same way?
    – W.Rether
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 14:44
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    Yes, it works everything as I can remember. Give a try and it should work as expected.
    – Udhy
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 14:55

2 Answers 2

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As far as i remember (afair), there was native Ggl Hangouts app (with 32bit components) for older macOS, but Ggl discontinued to share those files. Even if it was obtained it will not run in Catalina.

So an option that regular or power users can do is, use Wine-project software, it is an emulator type of software, it allows to run Windows app in macOS/Linux/Unix, etc,

  • and afaik the project & project's users have began to collaborate+work on supporting 64bit-only macOS (Catalina, Big Sur, etc).
    It is better for this case that Wine is installed by using a package-management type of software, (if Ggl Hangouts was available as stable option, and you were using 32bit supported macOS, then installing Wine directly w/o pkg-mngmt sw would've been fine).
    See this answer here (Load Wine by using MacPorts).
    ( MacPorts is a package-management type of software )
    ( Homebrew (is also another package-management software, but it) violates Privacy-Rights and creates risks1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ..., so i will not suggest to use that, but you are free to choose whatever you want to use )

GH = Google-Hangouts.

There was also a native Ggl Hangouts 32bit app for Windows, but Ggl discontinued files for this too, but some caching/wayback site may/can be used, to obtain it, (if you have original file's hash/checksum code known).
And another option is, if GH standalone app was already installed on a PC/Windows computer & you have access to that computer, then you need to copy Hangouts exe (executables), DLLs (lib), etc files, into your macOS computer's one of the folder, & then you can use Wine app to run the exe file in macOS/Catalina.

I have shown many/Various ways to use Google-Hangouts(GH) web-service (aka: chat network, aka: IM network) on Catalina (and Mojave) in below linked answer's EXTRA-INFO section, if you have time & respect for different choice/preferences, then read this linked answer here:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/400885/133434
( as i have posted the link, i will not repeat info here again )

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It’s probably overkill, but you can use virtualisation software such as Parallels to run an older macOS version with 32-bit support in a virtual machine, and then use Hangouts in that VM.

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