Where Does The App Store Download To

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.

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

The files are downloaded to

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

and once complete moved to

/Applications/

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.

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

Lion download

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.

/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

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...

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.

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

Many Thanks.

Copy to Ext Drive

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).

Lion already installed but now corrupt hard drive

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

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

this will re-download the file.

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.