After Mojave Install App Store apps not Updating

Temporary Workaround...I've confirmed it works, but don't give me any credit...I didn't discover it :-)

While running App Store go to Activity Monitor app and force quit appstoreagent process.

Starting download/update again everything works as expected, but only until one quits App Store.

Upon relaunch, the problem appears again.

My guess is that the problem is not resolved. I'm having the same issue.

You can confirm it by typing the following command into Terminal and seeing if you have a recent manifest.plist file. If you are comfortable with this kind of "surgery," you can delete all the files in the folder, reboot, and open the App Store again.

If you go into the same folder and do not see a manifest.plist file at all, then you will be having the same problem I am.

Bottom line, I've tested this across several machines and the Mojave Security Update 2021-002 10.14.6 seems to have broken the App Store's ability to download or update apps

If anyone here has a working App Store after applying the patch that dropped a couple days ago, please post here.

Another way you can test to see if this is a problem is to click on your user name from within the App Store app. It will show all your previous purchases, however, instead of an "open" oval, everything will look like a download cloud. I believe this is because there is no manifest.plist file to tell the App Store what apps you have.

Anyway, the terminal command to open the the App Store folder is:

open $TMPDIR../C/com.apple.appstore/

I have an escalated case with Apple Engineering and will post back when I hear something.

If it's not obvious, this pretty much sucks because anyone with this problem cannot buy, re-download, or update apps until it is fixed.

If you have not yet applied the Mojave Security Update 2021-002 10.14.6, my 2cents is to wait.

Unfortunately, @AfMac, that means you are in the same boat we all are. I believe the last security update fixed a different issue with the MAS which resulted in an error message that said something like "cannot complete purchase". However, this latest one almost definitely created the issue we are all seeing. I have confirmed it across three different machine and two different networks. The one machine that does not have the latest security patch, continues to work.

Again, I have an open case with Apple Engineering and will be happy to update when I know more. I think this will just continue to escalate as more people get update notifications and cannot update their apps.

I just spent 45 minutes with apple support and they kept saying that the apple status page says no problem with mac app store and my computer is vintage, now this makes me very angry because it is a 27 inch imac 16 gig of ram and 1 tbyte ssd hard drive it wasnt cheap. I have had this problem for 2 days and just updated to the 2021 security update this morning.

@Gregory,

Can you go into your MAS and tap on your user name to pull up previous purchases?

Once there, do they have the "open" buttons or "cloud" buttons?

If you see "cloud buttons," then the update you applied cleared your available updates, but you will not be able to download future ones as they become available.

@Afmac,

What year is your iMac? Given the configuration, I do not believe it is vintage or obsolete which generally requires it to be 7+ years old.

So, vintage don't mean much, just that your Mac is between 5 & 7 years old. Once it passes 7 is when it likely won't be updatable, but that can sometimes occur earlier I believe.

Regardless, this issue has absolutely nothing to do with the age of your iMac. Beyond that, the specific issue has everything to do with you retaining access to applications you purchased via the MAS. Once your Mac is obsolete, you might not be able to update to the next operating system, but that doesn't mean you should lose access to your apps.

This is a situation where a security update broke something had previously been working. If your iMac were truly obsolete, it would not get any more updates, however, if you are pushed an update, you have the reasonable expectation that it not make things worse :-)

Just my 2cents

This is not a security update issue, at least not when it comes to SU2021-002. There are several threads here already and one with a temporary workaround that's been proven. Apple borked something on their end, and is affecting a multitude of Mojave users, both with supported and unsupported equipment. Apple needs to fix this. There's nothing else we can do except wait.

@robert

Some more good news for you...

I can confirm that Apple Engineering applied a fix yesterday. I was able to confirm today and then asked for root cause analysis that I could share here.

From Apple:

As it has been explained to me with the recent security update for Mojave when the App Store launches, it asks appstoreagent for adoption eligibility. The issue seemed to stem from a wrong file type that was being provided by the process which caused a hang. After that was readjusted by our engineering team to be a compatible file type the issue seems to now be resolved.

[Personal Information Edited by Moderator]

Thank you. Are you saying Apple applied a fix from their end - as in no OS updates to download? I tired your fix this morning without trying without first, so I did just now go back and close the app store, reopen it, and try to download something free just to see if it worked, and it appears that it did. So fingers crossed, they did indeed fix it?

Robert H. Ziller wrote:

Thank you. Are you saying Apple applied a fix from their end - as in no OS updates to download? I tired your fix this morning without trying without first, so I did just now go back and close the app store, reopen it, and try to download something free just to see if it worked, and it appears that it did. So fingers crossed, they did indeed fix it?

Yep...Apple had to apply a server side fix that was disallowing the most recent Mojave build from accessing the App Store.

Which three apps? They may require Catalina or later.

Well that's good.