Grayed out Apple ID when updating App Store applications

August 2, 2019

In category: Miscellaneous
Tagged with: app store, macOS, Solved / Fixed

This post is more than a year old, so the information may be outdated. Just a heads up.

Updating an app installed on a Mac by an account you don’t have the password for, here’s how to bypass the grayed out Apple ID prompt:

Go to the /Applications folder: Finder –> Applications
Right-click the app that needs updating — in my case, XCode
Click Show Package Contents
Go into the Contents folder
Now go into into the _MASReceipt folder.
Delete/Move to Trash the receipt file (you may be prompted for a local administrator username and password).

Boom. You should now able to update with no problem and get along with your merry day.

Let me know in the comments below if that doesn’t work. Apple sometimes makes changes with new OS releases.

Cheers and peace.

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Wondering why you keep seeing lower-cased 'i' in my posts? Read -> Why ‘i’ is not capitalized

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