Cannot get progress to show in app store download of Mountain Lion

I am also experiencing the same issue, with a little more detail. If you click on the "OS X Mountain Lion" app title link on the right, I get this message:

Item Not Available

The item you've requested is not currently available in the U.S. store.

I believe it is related to the fact that Apple is only making OS X Mavericks available for direct purchase in the App Store as of a few days ago. See this article:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/apple-now-selling-20-mountain-lion-and-lion-red emption-codes-for-older-macs/

However, the article also says that users who previously purchased OS X Mountain Lion (or Lion) should still be able to download it from the App Store. That does not appear to be true, however. I purchased OS X ML via the App Store previously (which is why it shows up in my Purchases), but I can't download it now.

Okay, two new discoveries to add to this issue:

1) Apparently, on the 2011 iMac, which came with Lion, on which I've been trying to down ML, even though there is no progress bar to be seen in the App Store, it actually DID download the installer after waiting for a while. The install screen suddenly popped up for me though I wasn't expecting it.

2) On a MacBook Air that came with ML, the download actually works as expected.

There may be no apparent "progress bar" in the App Store. It may be a bug associated with this particular download. Unfortunately I am not in a position to determine if this is related to you being overseas or not.

To determine if it is actually downloading use Launchpad. You should see a fairly obvious new icon with an associated progress bar. Make sure you check every Launchpad page by swiping left / right.

The downloaded file will also be in your Applications folder. When it finishes, it looks like this (Mavericks icons are shown; Mountain Lion is similar):

Check your Downloads folder. Before it finishes downloading, it will have a "progress bar" at the bottom. While it is downloading it looks like this:

If it's paused, click the icon to restart it.

Once it completes the icon will appear in Applications and Launchpad, it's just easier to find in Launchpad.

Launchpad equivalents:

When it's finished it looks like this:

If it really is not downloading read Mac App Store: How to resume interrupted downloads

1. Open the Mac App Store.
2. From the Store menu, choose Sign In.
3. Enter your Apple ID and password.
4. Click Purchases to get to your Purchases Page.
5. Click the Resume button next to the app name.

If that doesn't work, "sign out" of the App Store, and sign back in again.

If that doesn't work, try restarting your Mac.

If that doesn't work, write back.

Right, there is no Launchpad in Snow Leopard.

Have you checked your Downloads folder?

"Only" 4 GB can be very frustrating to download with slow Internet. I believe my record was nearly a week to download an OS X update, over dialup. Hopefully yours is faster than that.

Lion here. I see no progress bar in the App Store, and nothing in the Downloads folder. Launchpad, yes. Though the bar means very little given how long I am expecting the download to take.

I blows my mind that it has to be this difficult to find the progress of a download. I have never had trouble with anything this simple in any other OS.

Despite the error message, if you have purchased Lion or Mountain Lion you can install it through the app store. But as mentioned, when you click the Download button there is often no indication that anything is happening ... but it probably is.

One good way I found to monitor whether Lion is downloading is to open activity monitor and click the network tab. You should see the activity pretty high depending on your connection speed and you can follow the progress of the download (as long as you aren't doing any other network related activity such as browsing the internet). When you see it get to about 5 GB of data transfered, you are about done and the lion installer should launch automatically when it finishes