Mac – Limit automatic updates to software and applications only, but not OSX

mac-appstoresoftware-update

I manage several Macs, and from a security point of view i would like to make sure they where always up to date with the latest patches for their version of OSX.

I understand there is an inbuilt tool in the "mac app store" application to do this.

My concern is that the auto update tool would auto update these machines to the latest version of OSX. eg. Sierra. Because we have to run some mission critical software on a few machines we can not upgrade past Yosemite at the moment so i wouldn't want the auto update to upgrade OSX. Is it possible to get the auto update to upgrade applications and patches, but not OSX itself ?

Best Answer

It will not automatically update to Sierra. It will alert you, and will download in the background (one of the "features" they copied from Windows 10) but you have to click on the "Install" button to install it.

I am running El Capitan with everything set to Auto Update and not once has it tried to install Sierra. However, the way I got around it was that I downloaded it to make a USB Installer and left it in place.

That said, you can turn off the background downloading of automatic updates. In System Preferences --> App Store:

You also have the option to install app updates and OS X updates, but it will download items in the background.

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Mac – Multiple instances of installed applications and updates displayed in updates history

If you get it working just by redownloading, it's nothing to worry about.

As both a user and developer I can tell that these types of errors aren't uncommon (Often times caused by an unstable internet connection or if the Mac has been on standby for a longer period whereafter the download is continued). But it's decided by multiple factors including your router, signal strength, geographical location and so on.

The problem is that it can be hard to perfectly download every little piece of a large file. Sometimes it's read wrong or written wrong to the disk and this causes corruption and possibly confuses the part of App Store that displays progress and download items.

To Apple's credit, though, they seem to be able to "chunk" download effectively most of the time, where other apps (like Chrome for instance) just kills the download and makes you manually start over. Personally, I rarely have these types of errors anymore (they were much more common in the "early days" of the App Store).

MacOS – App Store using old information after manual XCode upgrade

Try resetting the Mac App Store.

Enable the debug menu and restart the Mac App Store.

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Choose the Reset Application option and restart the Mac App Store.

Best Answer

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MacOS – App Store using old information after manual XCode upgrade

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