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Cade's Dotfiles

Mac App Store reports `No downloads initiated`

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Source: Troubleshooting reference

Symptom: bootstrap.sh upgrade reaches Upgrading Mac App Store apps (mas), then prints one or more messages such as:

Error: No downloads initiated for ADAM ID 682658836

Root cause: mas found a newer catalog version, but macOS’s private CommerceKit API returned no download object and no underlying error. The message alone does not distinguish App Store sign-in or account ownership problems from an App Store service or cache failure. Homebrew has already finished by this point, so this refusal must not turn the whole Homebrew reconciliation into a failure.

Confirm the pending apps and the local App Store configuration:

Terminal window
mas outdated
mas config

mas 7 also requires root privileges for updates. The bootstrap only runs it when sudo is already cached because its password prompt is hidden inside the logged command. Run sudo -v before bootstrap to enable the automatic attempt.

Fix: open App Store, sign in or accept any pending account terms, and update the named apps there. Then rerun mas outdated; once it is empty, rerun ~/dotfiles/bootstrap.sh upgrade. The bootstrap preserves mas warnings but continues after Homebrew itself has reconciled successfully.