How to install apps from the Apple Store on your Mac from the terminal

I am forever in the quest to stop using my mouse for simple tasks. Installing software is one of those situations… I have been spoiled with the Linux package managers like apt and yum, and I get really grumpy when I have to use my mouse to install something. The homebrew cli tool has been a mainstay for me since I started using macs a few years ago, but then I hit the limit on that sometimes as well. In this case, it is the Microsoft Remote Desktop app that is the most recent source of clickiness. Let’s remedy that.

Mas comes to the rescue

Thanks to the mas project, we can install apps from the Apple Store with the terminal. First, you need to install it, using brew install mas, naturally. Then you need to sign-in to the Apple Store, this bit of clickiness is unavoidable since the mas signin is broken as of MacOS 10.13 according to this github issue.

Finally, you can install your app by using the ID in it’s name. You can find apps with mas search microsoft | grep -i remote, I know it has both ‘Microsoft’ and ‘Remote’ in the name, so I grep it. Now that I found the ID, I can install it with ‘mas install 1295203466’. Viola, we have Microsoft RDP installed. Now I can use it with vagrant rdp, and all those other places I need to RDP to something.

$ mas search microsoft | grep -i remote
  1295203466  Microsoft Remote Desktop                                                               (10.5.1)
$ mas install 1295203466
==> Downloading Microsoft Remote Desktop
==> Installed Microsoft Remote Desktop