The first line of defense is keeping your Mac up to date as many updates patch vulnerabilities and security holes in the system. In this post, I will discuss how to easily keep your macOS operating system, the apps from the app store, and the apps installed outside the AppStore up to date.
Keeping the MacOs operating system up to date.
It is easy to keep the operating system up to date.
- Open > System Preferences... > Software Update
- Select Automatically keep my Mac up to date
- Click on Advanced...
- Make sure all options are enabled and click on OK. Close System Preferences
Now the MacOs operating system will be kept up to date automatically.
Manually update App Store Apps
- Open > App Store...
- Select Updates on the sidebar.
- If updates are available, click on their Update buttons, or better yet, click on the update all link in the upper right corner. The updates will now be downloaded and installed.
Keeping App Store Apps updated
- Open > App Store...
- In the menu, select App Store > Preferences
- Enable Automatic Updates
Updating Apps that come from other sources
Great, the macOS operating system and all the apps you got from the App Store are now automatically updated. But what about the apps you downloaded from other sources. Only very few third-party apps have automatic updating. You could keep a list of all the applications you are installing and all the plugins and make a recurring task in the task manager of your choice to remind you that you need to check this list for updates. Instead, I choose to have an app do this checking for me. The app that I use is called Macupdater and costs $15. You can test the app for free.
- Go to the Macupdater website
- Click on the download button and click on save.
- Dubble click on the downloaded dmg file.
- Drag the Macupdater icon to the Applications folder.
- Start the Macupdater application
- The first time a popup is shown, reminding you that this is an application downloaded from the internet. Click open
- Click on Begin Setup
- Click on Use Background Mode
- Click on skip Tour or follow the tour to learn more about the app
Macupdater will now scan for the apps.
Unless you choose otherwise, it will run daily to let you know about any updates. Most apps can be updated with a click on the update button; for others, Macupdater will start your installer.