what is this "autoupdate" in my dock?

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Level 1

5 points

what is this "autoupdate" in my dock?

hi, I just noticed this icon in my dock and was unsure of what it is and what its doing.

It is named "autoupdate" and the drop down menu, next to the apple icon, has no items.

Also, over the last few weeks a popup has been appearing from time to time. The popup is "autoupdate" asking for a password to make changes to the computer. As I'm not sure which program it belongs to I have just canceled the password requests so far.

Does anyone know what this is and what I should do?

BTW, I'm running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2

Thanks, Daniel

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Apr 8, 2015 11:51 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 9, 2015 2:33 AM in response to 93dan93

I don't recognise that icon, it is not the icon for AutoUpdate from Microsoft Office 2008 or 2011 for example.

You could try right-clicking on the icon in the dock and selecting 'Show in Finder' from the resulting menu. The name/location of that folder might give clues as to what application this AutoUpdater is for.

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Answer 2

dominic23

Level 10

84,024 points

Apr 9, 2015 3:59 AM in response to 93dan93

It is an autoupdate icon.

Do you have an application by name Duet installed?

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Answer 3

Redarm

Level 4

2,593 points

Apr 9, 2015 5:03 AM in response to 93dan93

It's the icon of the Sparkle.framework, an update framework many application have.

If you right click it and select "Options > Show in Finder", it would show you in which application it resides.

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Answer 4

Jun 4, 2016 2:13 PM in response to 93dan93

I'm running OS X 10.11.5. This update introduced two new "features". One is that OS X will not restart or shut down. It freezes after the Finder disappears. The other "feature" is the appearance in my dock of Autoupdate (see icon below). This is not Microsoft's Autoupdate, and it always shows "Application not responding". Cannot find it as a process in Activity Monitor and cannot Force Quit it from the Finder.

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Answer 5

Redarm

Level 4

2,593 points

Jun 5, 2016 6:18 AM in response to viperduude

See my last post. Again it's the Sparkle.framework many applications use to auto-update.

Try updating your apps manually and/or turning off auto-update in their preferences.

This might also fix your restart/shutdown issue.

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Answer 6

Jun 5, 2016 6:38 AM in response to viperduude

Sparkle is nothing to do with Apple themselves, Sparkle is used by many third-party developers as a standard library to implement auto-updating. Unfortunately earlier this year a couple of major security bugs were discovered in the Sparkle library, due to these security risks some network administrators then implemented emergency blocks on Sparkle so it can no longer auto-update or at least until you have manually upgraded your application(s) to a version that includes a fixed version of the Sparkle library.

See http://www.imore.com/sparkle-updater-leaves-os-x-theoretically-open-exploit

You may therefore need to manually update whichever application is trying to use Sparkle.

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Answer 7

Jun 5, 2016 3:32 PM in response to Redarm

It seems that the Parallels auto updater was using Sparkle, so deleting the Library and ~/Library/ items for Parallels solved that problem. Thanks.

I also discovered that a number of login items were related to Conduit, so I deleted them as well.

However, none of this has affected the shutdown/restart problem.

Thanks, all.

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