Learn which apps are 32-bit on your Mac and why that matters.
In this lesson for What’s New in macOS Catalina, I look at how you can tell which apps are 32-bit. Why do we want to do this? 32-bit apps no longer work in macOS Catalina. Note: If you are not using macOS Catalina, this method does not work, you’ll need to see my video demonstrating this with macOS Mojave.
Video Transcript (video also has closed captions):
In our first video on macOS Catalina, we’re going to look at how we can see which apps will no longer work on your Mac when you’re using macOS Catalina. Apple no longer supports 32-bit apps. So if you have an older app, it may not work on macOS Catalina. How do we tell which apps will work and which ones won’t? Well, let’s find out. Let’s go to my Mac. If you’ve been using macOS Mojave or an older version of macOS, you may have seen some tips out there that show how to tell which apps will work in macOS Catalina.
These tips, including mine, told you to go up to the Apple menu and then go over to About This Mac. From here, what they recommended, again, including myself, what we recommended was going over to system report, and then over on the left, you’re going to see Applications. We were able to see which apps were 32 bit and 64 bit from here. Again, Apple no longer supports 32-bit apps in macOS Catalina. So if you have an app that is 32 bit, it will not open on macOS Catalina. If you’re using macOS Mojave or older, when you went up to the columns here, there was one column that told you if the app was 32 bit or 64 bit.
Well, if we look here, you’re going to see I no longer have that column. I have the application name. I have the version. I swipe over to the left. I also have where it came from, and then I have when it was last modified. I can no longer tell if an app is 32 bit or 64 bit from the system information or the Apple menu. Now, how do we do that if we’re using macOS Catalina? How can we tell which apps will work on macOS Catalina if we’re using macOS Catalina? Well, it’s pretty simple. I’m going to quit out of this. I’m going to go up to system information and then we’re going to go to quit.
All we need to do is go to our applications folder. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go to my applications folder. I’m in my Finder here. If you’re not in your Finder, you want to click on the desktop. Once you’re in the Finder, you go up to Go, and then you go over to Applications. The applications window is going to open up. Now, you want to go into icon view, because the way that macOS Catalina tells you if an app will work or not is by the icon.
Now I go over to my icon view. We can now see my apps as icons, and if we look at an icon here, my CSSEdit, you’re going to see that the icon is grayed out a little bit, and I have an overlay on top of it indicating that this will not work on my Mac. Now, all we have to do is look at an app icon, and if it has this overlay on it, it will no longer work on your Mac. Now, what do you do? Well, you throw it away. You drag it down to the trash, and then you may get a confirmation confirming that you want to throw it away. I’m just going to use my touch ID to confirm it. This will depend on which computer you have, but I’m going to use my touch ID to confirm this, and now I just threw it away.
That’s how we can easily see which apps will work in macOS Catalina. All we have to do is go over to the applications folder. I recommend putting it into icon view, and then if you see your icon grayed out with a little overlay over top of it, indicating that it will not open, the Mac is telling you that that will not open on your Mac.
That’s how you can easily see which apps will work on your Mac with macOS Catalina while you’re using macOS Catalina.