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Question

Replace app with App store version on macOS

  • June 5, 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 54 views
J
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Hey guys,

im currently working on redoing some of the jamf stuff we have and one of the things i change is i am changing from pkg installed apps to their appstore versions wherever i can using VPP and automaticly install.
Is there an easy way to replace a pkg app with an appstore version i cant seem to find the right criteria to create smartgroups for the versions that are pkg so i can uninstall them. any thoughts?

Thankyou in advance for your brain-time :D

    4 replies

    C
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    • caffine247
    • Contributor
    • June 5, 2020

    Be careful..switching to the VPP version of the apps. Yes it would make patching easier for the apps you use. But the update can fail, with little logging or reason as to why. And if you are dealing with an international team, some apps may not be available in their country to download.

    There is not very little detail on how to tell an app store version from a installed version of an app. You can look through each computers installed application to determine if it was installed via app store or not. But nothing in the Smart searches to help isolate.

    D
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    • dgreening
    • Honored Contributor
    • June 8, 2020

    It seems like the old trick of stripping out the MAS receipt from App Store downloads and then packaging them for deployment no longer works. Doing this now results in a damaged App upon install and notification to re-download it from the App Store.

    H
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    • hhorn
    • Contributor
    • June 8, 2020

    Here is an extension attribute you can use to see if all Apple Apps are from the App Store, you can amend the array list to add any app you would like to check. When the extension attribute results in NO, you can use the same kind of script to delete the standalone version and replace it with the App Store version:

    https://github.com/hhorn76/JAMF/blob/master/Extension%20Attributes/SoftwareIWokrFromAppStore.sh

    J
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    • jrippy
    • Valued Contributor
    • October 28, 2020

    In my case, I want to do the opposite. That is remove the AppStore version and install a standalone (Looking at OneDrive and Remote Desktop as we have a mix of installs in my environment).
    If this were available as a criteria to Smart Computer Groups, I would be able to do that.
    Please add this as a criteria.

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