I’ve been on the lookout for a Google Hangouts desktop app for the Mac and there are actually few decent choices out there.
First off, I don’t want to run a Chrome extension and I don’t want to have to keep Gmail open in the background. That works for some, but it’s either out of sight, out of mind, or it’s jumping up in front of everything else annoying me. My goal is a Hangout app that can live without a browser.
Google Chat is getting a free standalone app, and all current Hangouts users will be migrated to it by the end of 2021. Flamingo is a fantastic Mac app if you often chat via Hangouts, Facebook or XMPP. You can grab it from the Mac App Store for just $9.99. Bonus: Look up @FlamingoforMac in the new Tweetbot 3 for iPhone and see how awesome their avatar looks in the timeline. I install Hangouts Chat on my Mac and the interface is on language I don't understand.How to fix. I installed the Mac OS app from here - https://chat.google.com. Apr 16, 2020 If a chat app alternative to Google Hangouts doesn’t cut it for you, and you still want to use a Google Hangouts app on your Mac, here are some solutions that may fit the bill. YakYak will help you use Google Hangouts on your desktop. It’s a client for the app in question that lets you access it outside the browser. Use Hangouts to keep in touch. Message contacts, start free video or voice calls, and hop on a conversation with one person or a group. Include all your contacts with group chats for up to 150 people. Say more with status messages, photos, videos, maps, emoji, stickers, and animated GIFs. Turn any conversation into a free group video call with up to 10 contacts.
The app comes preinstalled on many operating systems which makes it all the more annoying when it consumes resources in the background. Remove Google Hangouts on PC and Mac. The steps to remove Google Hangouts are very similar to PC and Mac. Since they both involve a very similar approach we have compiled these in a single list.
Recently I found YakYak. YakYak is actually quite impressive. It looks great, works pretty darn good, and it’s free currently. I accidentally stumbled upon it the other day and I’ve been using it ever since. So far, so good, however it’s currently in development and does lack some features; like spell check.
I also purchased Hangouts Plus not long ago. It’s a pretty good app that looks similar to Hangouts. The main downsides are that it’s a paid app, although not too spendy, and it has a weird “feature” where it makes the active chat tab grey and background tabs white. This is backwards to me.
Flamingo was the hot new app not long ago, but recently it went free and then I think development stopped, or slowed way down. It’s a decent app, great interface, spell check, and free. Definitely worth checking out since it’s free, but it’s starting to show the lack of updates as some things don’t seem to work like they should.
There’s also BetterApp and Chat for Hangouts but I haven’t tried them. They look a lot like Hangouts Plus though.
Messages and Adium work with Hangouts too, but only for basic text messages. They don’t include some of the bells and whistles and they don’t do a good job at marking things as read in Gmail. When I go back into Gmail, I hate seeing unread Hangout conversations when I’ve already completed those conversations.
At the end of the day, there really isn’t any great Hangouts desktop app for the Mac. There are some pretty good choices, but Hangouts is still best in the browser, even if some of us don’t want to be locked in the browser.