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I’ve been on the lookout for a Google Hangouts desktop app for the Mac and there are actually few decent choices out there.
Hangout Chat Sign In
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.
How To Setup Google Hangouts On Mac. Here is the step by step procedure for enabling Google Hangouts on Messages app in Mac. Launch stock Messages application on your Mac. Just make sure that it properly loads up. Once the app opens up, choose Messages header in menu bar and choose Add Account from the drop down list that opens. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to Hangouts and loads of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to Hangouts are Discord (Freemium), Signal (Free, Open Source), Skype (Freemium) and Element (Free, Open Source).
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.
Is Google Hangouts Free
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.
Google Hangouts On Mac
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.
Google Hangout Chat App Mac Ios
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.