where does app store save the download files to my computer?

[camomac]

title says it all.
where does the file go that i download from the app store.
my reason for this is i like to keep all my software backed up on a separate drive.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by camomac

title says it all.
where does the file go that i download from the app store.
my reason for this is i like to keep all my software backed up on a separate drive.

Should end up in the "Applications" folder. In the Finder, press Command-Shift-A.

[camomac]

yeah, i understand where the application itself is, but where is the .dmg file?
or does the app store download/install/then delete the install file?

[svkrzn]

Originally Posted by camomac

yeah, i understand where the application itself is, but where is the .dmg file?
or does the app store download/install/then delete the install file?

I bet for the second one. Downloads the dmg to the temp dir then delets it, or just downloads the .app only.

[camomac]

i really hope not. i am kinda iffy on the whole cloud only process.
i like the media where i know I can get to it.
anybody know for sure???

[iPhone1]

It downloads the .app file to your Applications folder. If you are really worried about controlling the file, put the .app file in a .dmg and hoard it.

[GadgetAddict]

Are you talking about the Mac App Store or the iTunes App Store?

[camomac]

Originally Posted by iPhone1

It downloads the .app file to your Applications folder. If you are really worried about controlling the file, put the .app file in a .dmg and hoard it.

Uh, yeah. thanks for the great advise and answering my question.

@GadgetAddict
I am talking about the Mac App Store in Snow Leopard.

[Brokentoaster]

The files are downloaded to

/Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Application Support/AppStore/

and once complete moved to

/Applications/

[Squishy Tia]

I know this is a (slightly) old thread, but since it's relevant...

How does one change where the files are downloaded to initially? I boot from an SSD and I do not have infinite space to waste on downloads like this nor do I appreciate the wear and tear exacted on the SSD's memory cells for this process.

I'm getting sick and tired of Apple taking more and more control away from the user at the user's expense.

[MacSlut]

Originally Posted by Squishy Tia

I know this is a (slightly) old thread, but since it's relevant...

How does one change where the files are downloaded to initially? I boot from an SSD and I do not have infinite space to waste on downloads like this nor do I appreciate the wear and tear exacted on the SSD's memory cells for this process.

I'm getting sick and tired of Apple taking more and more control away from the user at the user's expense.

You don't. There's no reason to. The apps are only temporarily placed while downloading at:
~/Library/Application Support/AppStore

Once downloaded, they're moved to:
/Applications

As such, you're not wasting space on downloads, since nothing remains in the download location after you finish.

As far as wear and tear, it would be incredibly negligible, especially since moving the files only results in changes to the directory, not moving the file's location in the memory cells of the SSD.

Of course you could move your entire user directory and your Applications folder off your SSD, but that's a set of hacks that would probably defeat the purpose of having an SSD in the first place.

"I'm getting sick and tired of Apple taking more and more control away from the user at the user's expense."

Maybe it's because Apple really does know better.

[SFJon]

This thread is more relevant today. Where does the Lion download end up?

[crashidioteque]

Originally Posted by SFJon

This thread is more relevant today. Where does the Lion download end up?

/Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Application Support/AppStore

There will be another directory seemingly random number, in my case: 444303913

in there will be a *pkg and some other files... (mine is still downloading)

morpheus:AppStore <USERNAME>$ ls -lR 444303913/
total 2946160
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 54688 Jul 20 13:34 flyingIcon
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 1507721216 Jul 20 16:48 mzm.stuhjljp.pkg
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 646710 Jul 20 13:35 preflight.pfpkg
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 4676 Jul 20 13:34 receipt

[Geordiekeith]

Originally Posted by SFJon

This thread is more relevant today. Where does the Lion download end up?

The download goes in the Application folder, and automatically opens. Once finished updating it automatically deletes itself!

I redownloaded (press on the Option/Alt key while clicking on Install in the App store). When downloaded (again!) ignore the Installer screen and the "continue" button, and copy it to a USB key. I tried moving it to another folder, but it would not move, even after quitting the installer, but if you move it to Trash, you can then remove it from Trash to another folder.

[crashidioteque]

Originally Posted by crashidioteque

/Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Application Support/AppStore

There will be another directory seemingly random number, in my case: 444303913

in there will be a *pkg and some other files... (mine is still downloading)

morpheus:AppStore <USERNAME>$ ls -lR 444303913/
total 2946160
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 54688 Jul 20 13:34 flyingIcon
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 1507721216 Jul 20 16:48 mzm.stuhjljp.pkg
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 646710 Jul 20 13:35 preflight.pfpkg
-rw-r--r-- 1 <USERNAME> staff 4676 Jul 20 13:34 receipt

Once the download was complete, a window appeared to install Lion... I believe I found the image here..

morpheus:SharedSupport root# pwd
/Applications/Install Mac OS X Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport
morpheus:SharedSupport root# ls -l
total 7311504
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3743009943 Jul 20 17:29 InstallESD.dmg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 475347 Jun 30 02:41 OSInstall.mpkg

[adamtouzani1996]

Originally Posted by crashidioteque

Once the download was complete, a window appeared to install Lion... I believe I found the image here..

morpheus:SharedSupport root# pwd
/Applications/Install Mac OS X Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport
morpheus:SharedSupport root# ls -l
total 7311504
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3743009943 Jul 20 17:29 InstallESD.dmg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 475347 Jun 30 02:41 OSInstall.mpkg

I was wondering if anybody could tell me how they did the "morpheus" stuff. I looked all over the internet with no luck...

[jsears]

Originally Posted by adamtouzani1996

I was wondering if anybody could tell me how they did the "morpheus" stuff. I looked all over the internet with no luck...

"morpheus" is the name of crashidioteque's system. "SharedSupport" is the current directory and "root" is the current user. The command is what is following the #.

The first command is "pwd", the output is on the next line and is the working directory.

The second command is "ls -l" and is outputting the contents of the directory in a long format.

Hope that helps.

[eboakes]

When the download completes and the screen with "Continue" appears:
1. Plug in an external drive. (Mine is named Azure)
2. Create a directory at the top of the external drive named "LionInstall"
2. Bring up a terminal window
3. In the terminal window type these commands:
cd /Applications/Install*
find . -print | cpio -pmdv /Volumes/Azure/LionInstall
4. This will take a few minutes. Wait for it to complete.
5. When you want to copy it back to your Mac (or another Mac), again use cpio. Once it's copied back from your external drive to /Applications, change the name of the directory to "Install Mac OS X Lion.app"

[Pixel8r]

Originally Posted by eboakes

When the download completes and the screen with "Continue" appears:
1. Plug in an external drive. (Mine is named Azure)
2. Create a directory at the top of the external drive named "LionInstall"
2. Bring up a terminal window
3. In the terminal window type these commands:
cd /Applications/Install*
find . -print | cpio -pmdv /Volumes/Azure/LionInstall
4. This will take a few minutes. Wait for it to complete.
5. When you want to copy it back to your Mac (or another Mac), again use cpio. Once it's copied back from your external drive to /Applications, change the name of the directory to "Install Mac OS X Lion.app"

Please could you give an idiots guide to the last step, to copy the backup to another mac.

TIA

[eboakes]

To restore your copy of the Lion backup from an external drive called Azure, and from a directory on that drive called Lion:
1. Bring up a terminal window and type the following commands:
cd /Applications
mkdir Lion
cd /Volumes/Azure/Lion
find . -print | cpio -pmdv /Applications/Lion
2. This will take a few minutes. Wait until it is complete.
3. You may close the terminal window now.
4. In the finder, navigate to /Applications
5. Change the name of the directory, Lion (that you just created and moved 3.7GB of files into) to Install Mac OS X Lion.app

The command "find . -print" spits out a list of all directories and files visible from the directory in which this is executed. The vertical bar (called "pipe") sends that to the next command on the line. The command cpio is a handy, general purpose directory compacter and mover. The options do the following:
- p "pass" This means to pass the files from one place (where you execute the command) to another place (the final argument to the command)
- m This means to maintain the modification dates of the files. This might be optional, but I'm just in the habit of using it all of the time so that things like my iTunes music maintains its dates, etc.
- d This means that a directory is expected as the final argument for where to pass the files to
-v "verbose" This means to list all of the directories and files on stderr, which, in this case, is the terminal window. This actually isn't necessary, but seeing the file names blow by gives me a nice warm feeling that cpio is actually doing something.

If you do this correctly, the permissions of the resulting .app directory should be correct. But, in the event that they are not (it isn't executable by you) then change the name back to something without any spaces in it (such as Lion), bring up a terminal window, navigate to the directory that it (cd /Applications) and type chmod -R 777 Lion, which will set the read, write and execute bits for everyone on your Mac. Then close the terminal window, bring up the Finder, navigate to /Applications and change the name of Lion back to Install Mac OS X Lion.app.

To install Lion: from the bar at the bottom of the screen, click on Applications (towards the right) and click on the Lion icon to install Lion onto the Mac.

[Pixel8r]

Many Thanks.

[jlivesey]

You can play with cpio if you want to, but you can also simply copy the "Install Mac OS X Lion.app" to an another *drive* (not folder on the same drive), and the package (with contents) will be copied. The copy is (as far as I can tell) intact ("show Package contents" is identical on the original [in /Applications] and copied . I have not verified that it is functional, though... (I need more time to do the install and work beckons).

[enrico45467]

Hi everyone,

I have looked through everything on this message thread and around on the internet. I found out that I don't have the Lion installation source on my drive since I have already installed it (I did not make a copy of the installation before the install as I did this last weekend).

Now I am having some hard drive troubles and I would like to recover everything, just that I don't have a good starting point. The AppStore tells me that Lion is already installed and won't let me download it again, since it is already installed and now I have to rebuild this system, is there a way to start out by re-installing Lion but on a new hard drive (I would like to just take this drive out and store it safely).

Is there a way to download the Lion installer or do I have to start over, booting then installing from the media that came with my MacBook Pro, then re-purchase Lion because of my disk issue?

I am not certain about time machine at this point, would it have the composite of 10.6 with the Lion updates that I took last week before this mess started? It would make things easier to recover, but for the future I would still like a clean starting point with 10.7 now if possible.

Any thoughts/comments are welcome and many thanks in advance for your help

Enrico

[Gregnyrfan]

Hold OPTION while selecting Mac LION icon in appstore. keep holding while clicking on the install button.

this will re-download the file.

[Gregnyrfan]

For a more detailed location on where the AppStore downloads the files -->

You have to have Hidden Files SHOWING!!!

Macintosh HD \ private \ var \ folders \ xv \ ttygflms2w1frc41jvtd85zc0000gn \ C \com.apple.appstore

This is where AppStore downloads and stores files before installation.

NOTE: some of the filenames could be different than mine (ttygfl... and C)

Hope this helps.