If you get fed up watching the progress bar crawl along when updating your Mac to a new version of macOS, a Reddit thread has a useful hint to speed things up: using a Terminal command instead …
Updating macOS through the App Store can take a very long time — for me it’s typically around 30 mins of rebooting and waiting. macOS has a built in softwareupdate utility, which is much faster. It also allows you to use your Mac while it updates (the updates seem to be applied while it’s powered on, and the reboot takes much less time than if it’s triggered by an App Store update).
To give a rough time estimate, it took around 10 mins to install the latest version of macOS 12.6 just now, and my MacBook Pro was only unusable for about 2 mins while it rebooted.
Oct 18, 2019 If any updates are available, click the Update Now button to install them. Or click ”More info” to see details about each update and select specific updates to install. When Software Update says that your Mac is up to date, the installed version of macOS and all of its apps are also up to date. Oct 01, 2019 To check for Python 2.7.x: python ––version. To check the version of Python 3 software: python3 ––version. Most systems differentiate Python 2 as python and Python 3 as python3. If you do not have Python 2, your system may use the python command in place of python3. OS X command line tools for developers – The ultimate tool to manage your Mac. It provides a huge set of command line commands that automatize the usage of your OS X system. guarinogabriel/Mac-CLI.
The original post suggested using a couple of command lines to perform the update:
The first checks for updates, and the second installs them. You then need to reboot when prompted.
But others in the thread suggested ways to further increase the efficiency of the process.
You could do “sudo softwareupdate -ia;sudo reboot” so they execute one after another. That way you really can walk away.
Vmware Cli Update
and:
Even better, do:
sudo softwareupdate -ia && sudo reboot
The reboot will then only happen if the first command succeeds. If it fails the reboot won’t happen and you’ll be able to see the errors.
Edit: Even even better:
sudo sh -c “softwareupdate -ia && reboot”
With my first example, if the software update takes a long-ish time, the timeout for sudo asking for a password will expire, and the sudo reboot will sit waiting for your password.
The 2nd version wraps both commands into a mini shell script, with a single sudo, so there’s no second sudo to possibly time out.
As with any software update, always ensure you have an up-to-date backup first.
Of course, no Reddit OS thread is complete without the obligatory editor wars, so you’ll be reassured to know that participants waste no time in debating the merits of vim versus nano …
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The great thing about Mac software downloaded from the Mac App Store is that it's very easy to check for updates. If you have automatic updates turned on, most apps will update automatically while you're asleep (or, at least at night, whether you're asleep or not). If, however, you know of an update launching at a specific time and your Mac hasn't automatically updated it yet, you can manually push out the update yourself. Here's how.
How to check for app updates in the Mac App Store
- Launch the Mac App Store from your Dock or Finder.
- Click on Updates in the menu on the left side.
- Click on the Update button next to the app you want to update or click Update All to update all apps in the queue.
How to see what apps you've purchased or downloaded on your Mac
To see your app history, visit your profile account information.
- Launch the Mac App Store from your Dock or Finder.
- Click on your Profile picture in the lower-right corner of the Mac App Store window.
- Scroll down the list of apps to see your app purchase and download history.
How to hide Mac App Store purchases on your Mac
If you don't want your kids re-downloading an app on your Mac, or for whatever reason, don't want a past purchase to appear on your app history list, you can hide it.
- Launch the Mac App Store from your Dock or Finder.
- Click on your Profile picture in the lower-right corner of the Mac App Store window.
- Hover your cursor over the app you want to hide.
- Click on the More button that appears. It looks like three dots inside a circle.
- Click Hide Purchase.
- Click Hide Purchase again to confirm that you want to hide the purchase.
You can unhide any purchases you hide from your account info page.
Any questions?
Do you have any questions about how to manually update apps you downloaded in the Mac App Store on your Mac? Put them in the comments and we'll help you out.
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