Very slow download speed in Apple App Store

I suggest giving manually downloading and applying this combo update over the top of your current kit. It may "fix" whatever is screwed up for you.

Download macOS Sierra 10.12.6 Combo Update

ASC - Late 2012 Mac mini, macOS 10.12.5;  Watch, watchOS 3.2.3; iPad Air 2 & iPhone 7+, iOS 10.3.2; TV 4th Gen, tvOS 10.2.2;  Airport Express

Having this problem in MacOS Sierra 10.12.6, MacBookPro11,3.

App Store OK until a couple of weeks ago--started with showing the wrong updates and then not showing updates at all. Was slow and that time and worse now--maybe 10x slower to open and to change screens (i.e. to change to updates screen. Tried some other suggested "fixes"--none helped. Careful to only get apps from app store--no place else. No wired peripherals but have wireless Brother printer and 2 Airplay speakers.

Booted into Safe Mode--same problem with App Store. Would greatly appreciate furhter help if you're still into this 3+ years later.

Ed Steinman

I think the servers are a bit slow, so you can't do anything.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.

Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. You must hold down the shift key twice: once when you boot, and again when you log in.

I am having this problem on a brand new Mac Pro.

I just did this test, booting into Safe Mode, and the download speed jumped back up to normal (before, I was getting literally a trickle download of like single digit kb/sec while trying to install Final Cut X).

Rebooting after booting into safe mode now, and my download speeds are back up to normal (or at least expected speeds).

Did the Safe Boot clear out something, or disable some 3rd party software? I have a 10Gb Thunderbolt NIC from Small-tree which required drivers to be installed that were apparently not signed sufficiently for the OS security services until after a reboot. The card works fine and does connect to my internal network at 10Gb.

Is there anything special about booting into Safe Boot mode that changes something?

Safe Mode does 2 things of which I am aware, it disables 3rd party software for that SM boot and it does a disk repair of the boot drive.

I can confirm a solution that works but it may not be available to all.

I was on holiday in Thailand and on a slower but perfectly acceptable connection at around ~10Mbps. My download in the mac app store was deadly slow... like insanely crazy slow, estimating 5 days to download 5 gig (OSX dev preview of Yosemite).

I happen to have my own VPN set up so I can access UK-based stuff when I'm abroad like BBC iPlayer etc so I connected via my VPN and restarted the app store download and went from around 1.5k per second to just over 1MB per second. It would appear that either there is location-based throttling going on or the endpoint in Thailand is really terrible.

The solution it would seem is to get access to a VPN and download that way! My personal opinion would be to get a VPN in the UK or US if possible, depending on where you already reside. VPNs can be found for free by googling.

Enjoy!

Rob Evans

CEO & Lead Developer

Irrelon Software Limited

I am in almost the identical situation, trying to download the beta version of Yosemite for testing purposes from the Australian App Store. I am in Indonesia at the moment and like you am using a VPN which makes me appear to be in Melbourne Australia. This usually provides download speeds of 1-2 Mb/sec but this download is giving an estimated download time of 5 days. I can fully understand that there would be a large demand for this file but I have observed this to be a consistent problem for a number of my friends here with the App store. It doesn't seem to matter which store they use both UK and USA stores are equally slow on different connections ie. WiFi / cable. A friend of mine tried to do an online OSX Mavericks system restore after a crash and eventually gave up due to the time required. So I'm a bit puzzled, the only thing I haven't tried is changing to the Indonesian App store due to the limited number of times one can do that. It's about the only thing left to try but I have my doubts.

When my download speed from Apple updates slows down - I will pause the update, Disconnect from the internet and just Shut down - Next day speed will be back.

I do the updates at night - as in my area all the utilities are working on lines during the day.

Shutting down for the day or time ends all jobs and cuts down on wear and tear on my mac. It is a personal choice & is probably why I don't have as many problems as those who only put it in sleep are reporting.

Weather can also cause slow downs - along with fires - etc.

For me a reboot worked. Surely there are a lot of App Store download servers and if one is slow for some reason re-connecting may connect you to another server and you're back in business.

Hello,

I had the same issue and here is what I did to fix it:

1. Quit the Mac App Store with Command + Option + Q

2. Open Keychain Access from Applications > Utilities

3. Go to Keychain Access > Preferences > Certificates

4. Set ‘Certificate Revocation List (CRL)’ to ‘Off’

5. Quit Keychain Access

6. Relaunch the Mac App Store and you should be set

I did that and it really worked as fast as it used to be 😉

Had the same issue, and this is what I did to fix it :

1. Quit the App store
2. Open Activity Monitor and quite these processes :

• storeaccountd
• storeassetd
• storedownloadd
• storeinapp

Restart the App Store. That's all

tks a lot . this help me <3

I had the same problem ,

Fixed it from a 4 day download to 35 min

Go into activity Monitor

and quit storagent

this will stop the current download but when you restart the the down again it has calculated 35 min instead of 4 days

hope it works for others

Sorry iGroover, i-develop etc. etc. all of this killing processes and not doing certificate revocation checks has nothing to do with it and does not solve the problem.

The problem lies at Apple's side, not on the Mac's of their customers. It has nothing to do with my ISP or anyone else. Forget location (i'm in Europe). It has nothing to do with you.

Apple, currently, at the moment that I write this post, are actively throttling downloads. No more, no less. Don't make to much of it and don't fix problems YOU don't have...

On my MBP and iMac I am trying to download the El-Capitan installer because i want to make an USB-Stick installer. On each machine, the download starts at full wire-speed (20 MB/s) and always, after about 10 seconds, drops to less than 0.7 KB/s.

About 10 seconds full speed, then the abrupt slowdown. At least it has been like that **today**. It says nothing on how it would have been 12 hours ago, or how it will be 12 hours in the future.

At the moment, I can repeat this over and over again. At the moment of writing, Apple is throttling and larger downloads, that do not fit in that, roughly 10 second window, get shafted. It is as simple as that.

No amount of killing processes etc. etc. etc. etc. can fix this as the problem is not on our machines. Period.

At other times, I can download large updates etc. etc. from the App Mac Store completely at full speed. This varies greatly and depends on the load on Apple's servers at that point.

It has been like this for years.

This **** happens on all my Apple Devices, regardless of iOS, OS-X, does not matter. Downloads can be fast, slow or mega-slow (like now) and we can do nothing about it.