The App Store app on your Mac is a place where you can find and download new and old apps for your machine. While it doesn’t happen all the time, sometimes the App Store gets stuck at a point for no reason. Maybe a download gets paused and it just doesn’t move forward, or maybe the store just doesn’t show anything on its screen. There could be multiple reasons why this happens.
Here are some ways to fix the frozen App Store issues on a Mac:
Force Quitting the App Store from the Force Quit Window
If the App Store is frozen and doesn’t let you do anything with it, you can force quit it so that it gets closed completely, and you can then relaunch it from the Launchpad or the Dock.
1. Make sure the App Store is still open on your Mac.
2. Press the “Command + Option + Esc” keys to bring forth the force quit window.
3. When the window opens, choose “App Store” as the app to be closed, and then click on “Force Quit” to quit the app completely.
4. The system will close the app whether it was responsive or not.
You can now relaunch it and see if it works.
Force Quitting the App Store from the Dock
There’s also a way to force quit the App Store from the Dock as shown below.
1. Make sure the App Store is open on your Mac.
2. Hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard and right-click on the App Store icon in the Dock. You will see that the “Quit” option has turned into “Force Quit.” Click on it, and the App Store will quit.
It will no longer remain open on your Mac, and you can relaunch it to see if the method above fixed the issue for you.
Killing the App Store Process Using Activity Monitor
In case you cannot do the above methods for some reason, you can use the Activity Monitor app on your Mac to force quit the App Store app.
1. Launch Activity Monitor on your Mac.
2. Click on the “CPU” tab on the top to go to the CPU options if you aren’t already there.
Once there, find the process named “App Store,” and click on it to select it. Then, click on the “X” icon on the top to quit the selected process.
3. You will be asked if you would really like to quit the chosen process. Click on “Quit.”
The App Store will be closed on your Mac, and once again you need to relaunch it to see if it has been fixed.
Deleting the App Store Cache Files
If force quitting the App Store did not help you fix the issues, then you can try deleting the App Store cache files. These files are used by the App Store to quickly provide you with content, and deleting these will force it to re-create these files which might help fix the issue. Here’s how to do that:
1. Launch Terminal on your Mac.
2. When Terminal launches, type in the following command and press Enter. It will take you to the temporary folder of your Mac where the App Store cache files are stored.
open $TMPDIR../C/
3. When the temp folder opens, you will see dozens of folders with different names. What you need to do here is find the folder named “com.apple.appstore,” right-click on it and select “Move to Trash.” This will delete the entire App Store cache folder from your Mac.
You can now relaunch the App Store on your Mac to see if your issues have been solved. This should have resolved the issues if the cause was the cache files.
Conclusion
While frozen App Store issues are rare on a Mac, when they come up they don’t let you download or update apps on your Mac. The guide above shows some of the possible ways to fix the issue to have a smooth experience obtaining new apps on your Mac.
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Mahesh Makvana
Mahesh Makvana is a freelance tech writer who’s written thousands of posts about various tech topics on various sites. He specializes in writing about Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android tech posts. He’s been into the field for last eight years and hasn’t spent a single day without tinkering around his devices.
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