32-bit app removal in preparation for Catalina

Maybe this is a silly question, as the answer may be as simple as, “well, when you upgrade, they won’t work”, but if I wanted to get ahead of the curve and start doing some house cleaning to remove all the apps that will no longer work this fall, is there a good process to find/eliminate them? I have a lot of cruft on my system, I’m sure. I haven’t gone the route of a full reinstall from scratch in a long, long time. Maybe it’s time I did that?

Anyway, wondering if there were thoughts.

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I’d like to point out that there are 64-bit apps that use 32-bit libraries for which “About This Mac” will not report but will not work on Catalina. The most well known of these is Aperture, however I’ve got some programs that run from the command line which are 32-bit and none of those are caught by “About This Mac”. YMMV of course, but I’ll be stuck on Mojave for some indeterminate time because of this.

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Good point - Aperture went 64-bit back in 2010!

True.

The OCR component of DEVONthink Pro Office 2.x is 32-bit and DEVONtechnologies mentioned in their forum that they do not intend to update it to 64-bit. So, one of the key features of DTPO will be defunct come Catalina.

Forces a decision: pay (a lot) for an upgrade, or don’t get the new features of Catalina.

I have a 2011 Mac Mini that will not run Mojave, let alone Catalina. I’m assuming 32-bit apps will continue to run on that (for at least as long as the developer makes them available). I also have a 2012 MacBook that is running Mojave and will, I assume, run Catalina. However, I don’t want to update that one since I want to keep the general feel of both machines the same as I use them both every day. Again, I’m assuming 32-bit apps will continue to run on Mojave.

My question is if there a way to disable the nag about updating on the MacBook.

Thanks.

St. Claire software has released a free utility that scans your Mac and reports all your 32 bit software similar to About This Computer, but also points out those that use 32-bit libraries. It adds a link to the software company’s website which is convenient. It also will keep track of the upgrade costs…

Here’s the link: https://www.stclairsoft.com/Go64/index.html

That app is somewhat problematic; it does not recognize apps built with both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries so that they’ll work on old and new OSes, like the excellent freeware XLD (a lossless audio decoder), which that utility inaccurately says is a 32-bit app.

There’s also 32-bitCheck: