How can I update applications automatically without admin rights

paulsmithbud
New Contributor

I deployed some applications via pkg files instead of mac apps. 

These applications now prompt the user for an admin password when updating. 

We can permit them to do so but I want to know if there is a script or scripts that we can use to auto-update applications and software.

I've read about Munky and AutoPKG but I wanted to check if there is a simple solution to what seems to be a common problem. 

Unless I need to write scripts for each app to check and install updates?

 

2 REPLIES 2

sdagley
Esteemed Contributor II

@paulsmithbud Some applications will install privileged helpers so they can update on Macs where the user isn't an admin. When that's not the case there's a few different options:

If you install apps via Jamf's Mac Apps->Jamf App Catalog they will automatically update when there's a new version released.

If you deploy packages via a Policy using a standard .pkg you can try and disable any automatic update process for the app (exactly how that would be down will vary between apps) and use Jamf's Patch Management feature to update apps that out of date.

For apps that a aren't covered by Jamf's Patch Management catalog you can create Smart Groups to identify apps that are out of date, and use those groups to enable Self Service policies for user initiated updates (or push updates if needed). You can use the Smart Group criteria to evaluate the version number with a regex to identify out of date apps, and this is a very useful script for creating those regexes: https://github.com/moorereason/make_ge_version_regex

Using AutoPkg/AutoPkgr is a good way to get automatic notification of app updates.

light-user
New Contributor II

@paulsmithbud OP any success in implementing this? I'm looking to do the same for an app deployed as a Pkf in jamf.