20 Mac App Store Tips

The Mac App Store is probably the best way to get apps for your Mac. Here are 20 tips for finding apps, figuring out if an app is worth downloading, and managing your apps.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are twenty tips for using the Mac App Store.
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So the Mac App Store is the best way to get new apps for your Mac. A lot of the most popular software is there. It's definitely more secure than just downloading from a website you may not know much about. It's pretty easy to install and uninstall apps. So here are fifteen tips for using the Mac App Store. 
My first tip is about searching. A lot of times we want to find an app that can open a certain type of file. We don't know what that app would be called so we don't know what to search for. But you can search for a file extension and get apps that will open that type of file. It's important to start with a period. So you want to start with period and then say pdf and you'll find apps that deal with pdf's. Period doc for apps that deal with Microsoft Word files. Period png for apps that deal with those type of graphic's files. The results aren't perfect but you're going to pretty quickly hone in on apps that deal with that type of file. 
When you find an app there's tons of information on the page that help you determine whether or not the app is the one that you want. One of the things I like to do first is go to the version history. You can find that under What's New. Click Version History. If you see a lot there, especially things that are pretty recent, you know that the developer is very active in developing the app, adding new features, and fixing bugs.
Next, if you scroll down you're going to find a lot of information grouped together here under Information. One of the things to look for is Compatibility. You'll see whether or not this app works on your current Mac. Click there to get more information like which version of macOS you need. So if you have more than one Mac you could quickly figure out whether it will work on all your Macs. 
That's my next tip. People don't know this but when you buy an app in the Mac App Store you're buying it for your Apple ID. So if you have more than one Mac, like if you have a Desktop Mac and a Laptop Mac, you just need to buy the app once. As long as you're logged into the same Apple ID on both Macs you can go to the Mac App Store in the other one and download that app without having to pay for it again. That's also true if you're sharing a Mac with somebody. If you have, say, an iMac and two user accounts for you and your spouse if you buy an app they're going to be able to use it on their account as well. They don't need to buy the app again. Now you're going to have to be the one to update it but they can certainly use any app that's installed from the Mac App Store. Now if there's a subscription involved then it may get a little tricky. But you could always use Family Sharing to Share not only purchases but subscriptions as well. Look in the listing for Support and it should say Family Sharing and give you details there for that app. Most apps will support Family Sharing.
Now a lot of apps include in-app purchases. Usually you'll see that right next to the button where you can get or purchase the app. It will say in-app purchases. But if you go to the page for the app and you go to the Information Section it will tell you there in-app purchases and it will say Yes if there are some. You click here to see exactly what they are. Usually this makes it very clear as to whether or not you can use the app at all without the in-app purchases or exactly what those purchases are about. For instance, here you can see that there's a subscription for this app and the in-app purchases apply to monthly or yearly subscriptions. 
Another thing you want to look for is information about the company. If you scroll down just a little bit next to the description usually there's a link for the website and a link for the support page. The website will often give you a lot more information than what you see here in the limited space for screenshots and a description. There may even be downloads of demos that you can get that aren't available in the Mac App Store. You also can click on Support to see exactly what the support from the developer looks like. Is it just an email address or is there a whole knowledge base of frequently asked questions. Also at the bottom of the information pages you can usually find a section called More By where it shows you other apps by the same developer. 
Now when it comes to reviews remember that the reviews in the App Store are not professional reviews but just reviews from regular users. So take them with a grain of salt. Certainly take a look at how many reviews and ratings there are. Read for content but don't always pay too much attention to the number or one bad review. A lot of times when regular users leave reviews they are not always thinking about how the app might be used by others. They are just thinking of exactly what they want to use it for and what they expected out of the app. So just because they gave it a low rating and a bad review doesn't mean that you might not like it. As a matter of fact you may love it and find that review wasn't useful at all. When you see the screenshots for the app you can't always tell what's going on. A lot of people don't know if you click on one of these it actually enlarges to full screen and then you can more clearly see what's going on in that screenshot. 
Now if you already have an app and you look at it in the App Store you'll get an Open button here instead of a Get or Purchase button. One thing you can do that a lot of people don't realize is you can completely uninstall an app. You can go into Launchpad and then use Launchpad's functionality to Uninstall an app and save all that space on your drive. When you go back to the App Store since you already purchased it using your Apple ID you can download it again without having to pay. So you can use this as a way to temporarily offload apps you're not using anymore. Like say you only use an app once in awhile and you're limited in space on your drive, you could uninstall it knowing that you can go back, reinstall it later when you need to use it, and then uninstall it again immediately when you're done. 
Now in addition to apps the Mac App Store also contains extensions for Safari. To get to those start in Safari and go to Safari, Safari Extension. That will take you to the Mac App Store app to a special page showing you some featured Safari extensions. Then you can use See All buttons to browse more. Speaking of browsing if you're not finding what you want by looking at the Discover or Main Category pages like Create, Work, Play, Develop you can always look for the See All button to dig down deeper. But you can also go Categories. Then pick a category, like business, and then you've got charts here for Top Free Apps and Top Paid Apps. If you want to see more you can click See All. So here you can see a really big list of the charts with free apps on the left and paid apps on the right. Then you can easily switch to another category clicking here. 
Let's say you see an app but you don't need it right now or you don't want to buy it right now. You want to Bookmark it. Well, there's no good way to bookmark inside of the Mac App Store. But you can click here to Share and then you have the ability to copy a link so you can paste it into a document or note or reminder. You can actually go directly to Notes or Reminders as well to add a link to this and that would then create a link. You could see here I could select the list. So I can create a list of bookmarks for this. When I click on this it will take me back to this listing in the App Store. 
If you ever want to see a list of all the apps you've purchased click on your Apple ID here on the bottom left. This will take you to your account and you could see what you've purchased in the past and if it's an app that you've purchased you can just click here to redownload it. There's also this button here that allows you to do some things. One of those being Hide the Purchase. So if you don't want to see it in this list anymore, maybe it's too long and cluttered, you can hide some of these if you're sure you're not going to use the app again. You still have purchased the app. You still can download it again. It's just not going to be shown in this list. You can always bring back the hidden items by going to View Information for Your Account and there's a link there for Hidden Items. You can click Manage, See the Hidden Items and then Unhide them. Also look here and you'll see Add Money to Account. When you click that you could actually go in and add something to your account so your account has a balance in it. This saves you from having to make all these 99 cent and $2.99 charges every time you purchase an app. Instead of that you can make one, say $50 or $100 charge now and then all of your subscriptions, all of your small app purchased will be deducted from that. So you won't have a credit card bill that's littered with all these tiny amounts.  You could also click Setup Auto Reload so it can reload whenever there's a low balance or just on a recurring schedule.
Also here in your account information is a way to manage your subscription. You can click there and you could see all your subscriptions. I don't have anything here for this demo account. But if you have recurring subscriptions this is where you go to see a list of those. This is where you an unsubscribe to them. Under App Store, Preferences you've got a checkbox for automatic updates which is very useful. You'll also find a second checkbox which automatically downloads apps purchased on other devices. So if you have two Macs and you get an app on one it's automatically added to the other. I find in most cases you want to do that manually. An app that you use on your MacBook you may not want on your iMac and vice versa. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “20 Mac App Store Tips”

Eric

3 years ago

Another useful tutorial. The facility to look for apps in the App Store that handled specific files types was something I was not aware of.

nick

Great stuff as usual Gary. I'm wondering what might happen if I uninstall an app on the Mac to save space, and by the time I want to re-install it the developer might have released a major update that needs to be purchased. Would the older version I had purchased still be available for download? thx

Gary Rosenzweig

nick: You can still download the app you purchased. If the developer releases a new version of that app is a "new app" (different app ID, sales page, everything) then you'd need to buy that to get it. But that would be true even if you didn't uninstall it.

Comments Closed.

20 Mac App Store Tips

Comments: 3 Responses to “20 Mac App Store Tips”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information