MacOS – Mac App Store thinks I don’t have any apps installed

mac-appstoremacos

Okay, I have the weirdest problem. All the apps in my 'Purchases' tab show either 'Install' or 'Download', most of the apps I currently have installed, but non the less it doesn't recognise them. This holds true for brand new apps (installed yesterday) and ones I've had since I installed ML. I'd really like to get the apps recognised, so that I can get updates for them.

I've scoured the internet far and wide and haven't even been able to find any similar problems.

I really wish someone has an answer 🙂

Update:
Deleting and reinstalling an app has no effect. It shows installed at first, but switching tabs and coming back to 'Purchases' renders it back to 'Install'.

Update:
`CKSoftwareMap: updateRequestBodyData:includeInstalledApps:includeBundledApps:conditionally:hadUnadoptedApps:waitUntilMapIsLoaded: timed out waiting for mdSemaphore“

This is the "culprit" from Console.app and seems to be dependent on Spotlight indexes. Still don't know what corrupts my spotlight indexes…

Best Answer

You'll want to focus on problems with either Spotlight finding the apps or perhaps an overall disk structure failure.

Unless you are going in and systematically modifying each app's receipt, the App Store should find apps using spotlight and correctly reflect the status assuming both the disk doesn't need repair and the spotlight index is current.