I’m one of the lucky people whose hobby and work coincide. I’ve been working in IT support since the 90’s, yet i still enjoy tinkering on my own machine with new software and workflows. As a result, I have more than 300 apps installed on my M2 MacBook Air and I am fanatical about keeping them up to date. I run two updaters every night as part of my routine:

  • Mac Updater from Core Code - a buy once (no subscription) app with lots of features including release notes, links to the title’s home page, automatic updates for most programs, app store links and more.
  • Latest from Max Codes - a free app that catches app updates that Mac Updater sometimes misses.

The Mac App Store is supposed to update apps you purchase there automatically but most find that it sometimes runs days and days behind. Both Mac updater and Latest check Mac App Store Apps so I was really surprised recently when I discovered even they miss some releases.

I found this out after installing the command line version of the Mac App Store via HomeBrew. After installation, you can run the following command to see what’s out of date on your machine:

$ mas outdated

If anything shows up, you can then run the following command to update your apps:

$ mas upgrade

I now have a weekly reminder in Things 3 to fire up iTerm to run both commands.