MacUpdater can automatically track the latest updates of all applications installed on your Mac. Launch MacUpdater to see at a glance which of your apps are out-of-date. And with a simple click, you can update any outdated app. Don't waste any more time manually searching for updates, downloading, installing, and cleaning up. Let MacUpdater take care of it all for you!
- SCAN: Nothing could be easier than finding out which of your apps are out-of-date with MacUpdater. Just launch it and let it scan your apps. You'll see a list of all your apps and apps with updates are listed in red. There are convenient filter-options to display just those apps that are outdated. You can also ignore apps or updates you are not interested in.
- UPDATE: Updating apps could not be simpler - just click the "Update" button next to any outdated app and MacUpdater will update the app to the current version automatically. MacUpdater can silently run in the background, check your apps for updates every day and let you know about new updates with notifications.
- PRIVACY: In contrast to competing services, you don't need to register to use MacUpdater. Just launch it, scan & update. Even more important, everything in MacUpdater is designed with your privacy in mind. We don't track you and we don't sell your data - because we don't even have it. In fact, we have an industry-leading Privacy Policy that should keep you all warm & snug.
- ONE-TIME PURCHASE: MacUpdater 3.x is a cheap one-time purchase, without any shady memberships, forced sub-scriptions or adhesion contracts. And if you just want to scan your apps without updating them, it's even FREE! Note: MacUpdater does require server-support and our daily maintenance to keep working: expect version 3.x to be supported until 2026-01-01.
- macOS 13 'Ventura' or later
MacUpdater is licensed under a proprietary license and is a free download. You can scan for updates for free, and update 10 apps for free. However, to update more than 10 apps, you need to purchase a license to unlock the full version.
The product homepage is located here: https://www.corecode.io/macupdater/
Technical support is available only from within MacUpdater, click the "Documentation" tab in the main window and press "Contact support…".
0.) Download MacUpdater from its homepage and once it has finished downloading start it from Launchpad or your Applications folder.
1.) Upon launching MacUpdater, it will scan your Applications folder. It will display all your apps in its window. Apps that have available updates are displayed in red and can be updated with a click on the 'Update' button next to them.
2.) MacUpdater is designed to be running all the time and to periodically check your apps for available updates so that it can inform you when those become available. Therefore MacUpdater displays an icon in the menu-bar instead of the Dock by default, to save precious Dock-space. Similarly, MacUpdater is launched by default when you start up your Mac. Both of these settings can be changed from the 'Settings'-tab of MacUpdater's window if you'd rather scan on-demand. Other configurable preferences include additional scan-folders, exclude lists, backups, scan-intervals, notification settings, and more.
FILTER BAR:
The filter-bar in MacUpdater's window allows the following:
- You can select to either show all apps or just the apps that are not up-to-date with the filter buttons.
- The filter pop-up button allows you to either show all, hide just apps from the 'Mac App Store' (which cannot be updated) or hide all apps that cannot be updated by MacUpdater automatically. Note that even apps that cannot be updated should display correct information about the newest version.
- For more advanced filter-options you can also select 'Custom…' in the filter pop-up which opens a window with more exhaustive filter options.
- The circular 'refresh' button allows you to initiate a full re-scan of all your apps. Re-scanning manually should not be necessary normally but can be handy if you don't let MacUpdater run in the background and scan each day.
APP MENU:
MacUpdater allows you to perform several actions on each installed app, like revealing apps in the Finder, opening their homepage (if available), rescanning them, or sending feedback back to us in case something is not working as expected. All of these actions can be performed through the app-menu either
- via the context menu when clicking on the app with the right mouse button or with control-click
- or by just clicking on the app, and then the app-menu will become visible in the lower right of the MacUpdater window
IGNORING APPS AND UPDATES:
MacUpdater will inform you about all available updates to all of your installed apps. This may not always be what you want and there are several facilities available in MacUpdater that allow you to manage that:
- IGNORING UPDATES: you can ignore a single update (e.g. if you think it is too minor or unimportant or you want to avoid it for any other reason), by invoking the app-menu (see above) and then selecting 'Ignore this Update'. MacUpdater will ignore this specific update and the app should turn 'green' again. You'll be notified again once an even newer update for this app is released. You can also ignore updates for a limited amount of time so that this update will automatically be shown again after some time ('snooze').
- IGNORING APPS: you can ignore an app completely by selecting 'Ignore this App' from the app-menu. This means the app will be completely from being displayed in MacUpdater's list. This can be beneficial if you know that you do not want to keep this app up-to-date e.g. because the update is too expensive. You can also ignore apps for a limited amount of time so that this app will automatically be shown again after some time ('snooze'). Note, if you have an app installed more than once, ignoring it will not affect other installations of the app, those will still be tracked for updates in MacUpdater. So, if you have an old version of an app installed in addition to the current version, you will probably want to ignore the old version, see also here.
Note, you can manage your ignored apps and updates in the settings-tab of MacUpdater. Resetting your lists of ignored apps and updates from time to time is a good idea so that you can reconsider whether previously ignored apps or updates should not be updated after all. MacUpdater will remind you periodically to clear your list of ignore-lists, but this can be turned off in the settings.
APP SUPPORT:
If you are wondering how many apps MacUpdater fully supports and how long it can take until the newest app versions are available from within MacUpdater, please read the
corresponding FAQ entry that explains our 3 support tiers.
APP INFO WINDOW:
MacUpdater can show you additional information for each app and each update. To access the "app info window", click on the small info button in the info column (second from right). The app info button is colored differently based on the type of update available:
Gray: The app info button is gray if the app does not have an update available.
Blue: The app info button is blue if the app has a normal update available.
Red: The app info button is red if the app has a major upgrade available or there is more information about this update available. Make sure to always click the app info button if it is displayed in red before updating the app.
The app info window provides the following information:
Current Version: information about the currently installed version of the app
Newest Version: detailed information about the latest version of the app
Release Notes: if possible, you'll see what has been changed in the newest version of the app
KEYBOARD NAVIGATION:
MacUpdater has been designed so that most functions can be performed using the keyboard and shortcuts.
To select the app-list click "tab". The app list can be navigated with the up- and down-arrows. Click "tab" again to select the "search bar".
Most shortcuts to operate MacUpdater can be seen when opening the File menu:
⌘-1 and ⌘-2 toggle the Show All Apps / Show Outdated Apps toggle.
⌘-⌥-1 through ⌘-⌥-4 switch through the app filters.
⌘-I shows the app info window, the Spacebar opens the app menu, Return simulates a "double click" on the app and ⌘-Return updates the app.
Additionally, all the actions that can be performed on a selected app (Show in Finder, Open Homepage, etc) do have keyboard shortcuts. Invoke the App Menu in the lower right corner of MacUpdater to see the keyboard shortcuts.
'HIDDEN' FUNCTIONALITY:
- To find out why a particular app is not listed in MacUpdater (see here), just drag it onto MacUpdater's app-list.
- To reinstall an app, select it in the main window and hold down the 'Alt/Option' to be able to select "Reinstall Selected App" from the "File" menu - more info here.
- As with any other app you can click on the column headers in MacUpdater's main window to sort the list. Whats less obvious that you can:
- sort by the 'Update' column to group by both update and support type (useful to keep apps with updates on top),
- sort by the 'Installed Version' column to sort by release date of the installed app version (useful to find old apps),
- sort by the 'Newest Version' column to sort by the release date of the latest update and
- sort by the Icon-column to sort by the manufacturer of the app (best effort).
- In the ignored-apps-viewer you can sort by path by clicking on the icon-column header.
- For apps where MacUpdater does not have any version information, the 'Latest Version' will be listed in gray instead of green/red.
- If you double-click an app in MacUpdater's app-list, its update-information will be displayed. Other actions like opening the app are configurable in the settings.
- If you place the mouse cursor above the name of an app in the app-list, the path of the app will be displayed in a tooltip.
- You can remote-control MacUpdater with the included 'command-line tool'- try it it out for interactive help from /Applications/MacUpdater.app/Contents/Resources/macupdater_client or head to the documentation on the business site.
- If you hold down the alt/option (⌥) key while opening the app-menu, you can directly move an app to the 'Trash' and update the config-file before re-scanning a single app (normally MacUpdater only updates the config-file before a full scan).
- The lower-right corner of the window features the scan button (⟳) which can be used to re-scan selected, outdated or all apps. The last scan is older than 12 hours, the button defaults to launching a full scan. If it is newer than 12 hours, it defaults to presenting options to rescan just the outdated or selected apps. To get these options even if the last scan is older than 12 hours, just right-click the button. This can also be done to the scan button available in the menu-bar interface.
- If you drag&drop an app onto the MacUpdater app-list it will be scanned and added to the list immediately, which is useful for newly installed apps, in case you don't want to wait until the next scan.
- Holding down shift (⇧) while clicking on MacUpdater's menu icon will directly open the main window.
- Right-click (or ⌥-click) on MacUpdater's menu icon will open the traditional MacUpdater 1.x menu.
- There are keyboard shortcuts for all app-actions like 'Show App in Finder', to learn them invoke the app-menu via the button in the lower right of the MacUpdater window.
- You can double click updates in the menubar-interface to view the update-info.
- The menubar interface displays the next scan date in the tooltip of the last scan date.
- There is a hidden option to show the 'Latest Version' of apps not in green but in orange if you have a version installed that is newer than the 'Latest Version' (e.g. if you have a beta version). Note that this option only works correctly in some cases and is completely unsupported. The option can be activated by running this in the 'Terminal':
defaults write com.corecode.MacUpdater HiddenOptionDisplayVersionOrangeIfNewer -bool YES
- There is a hidden option to use absolute dates in the 'Last Scan' and 'Next Scan' labels, as has been the default prior to MacUpdater 2.3:
defaults write com.corecode.MacUpdater HiddenOptionDisplayAbsoluteScanDates -bool YES
- There is a hidden option to allow usage of the PriviledgedHelperTool to update apps without ever requiring a password without having to give 'Full Disk Access' to MacUpdater and its helper. This option is completely unsupported but may be interesting to companies that want to install the helper remotely using the priviledgedHelperTool_install.sh script. The option can be activated by running this in the 'Terminal':
defaults write com.corecode.MacUpdater HiddenOptionDontRequireFullDiskAccessForHelper -bool YES
- MacUpdater will send out so-called 'NSDistributedNotification's after performing an update that can be used by other apps or scripts to post-process new apps, check out an example solution here.
- Another hidden option enables updating of running apps during the optional zero-click AutoUpdates. The apps will be quitted before update and you will also need to set the 'Quit Running Apps - Multi Update' option to 'Auto Quit' in the preferences:
defaults write com.corecode.MacUpdater HiddenOptionQuitAppsForAutoUpdate -bool YES
- There is a hidden option to automatically update apps after a manual scan, in addition to the default behavior of updating after scheduled scans. This feature is intended for users who wish to utilize the auto-update functionality even when they initiate scans manually. To enable this option, execute the following command in the 'Terminal':
defaults write com.corecode.MacUpdater HiddenOptionAutoUpdateAfterManualScan -bool YES
- Another hidden option configures MacUpdater to backup old apps to ZIPs instead of DMGs. Note that the 'backup old apps before updating them' option is not enabled by default and and does not make sense on systems that have a backup anyway. While ZIPs are a lot faster to create they may not be as safe as DMGs. To enable this option, execute the following command in the 'Terminal':
defaults write com.corecode.MacUpdater HiddenOptionBackupOldAppsToZIPs -bool YES