Mac – Can ghost app updates be cleared in OS X

mac-appstoresoftware-update

I have this Twitter application that shows on my Mountain Lion available updates list but I don't have any twitter app on my Mac. I had, but I have deleted it times ago.

Since then, every time twitter updates their app, I receive a notification that a new update is available.

How do I get rid of this ghost app update entry that haunts updates list in the App Store app?

enter image description here

Best Answer

In almost all cases, this is one of two things:

The first is much easier to fix, so eject all disks and network volumes and then quit and re-launch the App Store. If you still show an update, check for other copies of that app using spotlight.

Once you are sure it's not a case of more than one app, you can go down the more complicated path of spotlight triage/repair. I like to add all drives to spotlight’s privacy pane and delete all copies of the problem app and reboot. Then turn on spotlight for just the boot volume.

Once spotlight is done indexing that drive, go reinstall the problem app. If things are clear, enable spotlight on all remaining volumes. If not, we can cover that bigger spotlight issue in a different thread.