Force Mac App Store to Install to Applications Folder

Question

I recently purchased a copy of my own Mac App Store app (using promo code) so that I could experience it the way my customers do.

I've discovered that downloading the app from the App Store will not just install in the Applications folder, but will instead overwrite the first app it finds on my hard drive that matches the corresponding bundle ID. I found out the hard way when I noticed that it overwrote the contents of my Xcode Archives for a previous version.

So, does anyone know a way to prevent this from happening? Thanks.

Answer 1

OSX stores details of all downloaded files and applications in a database per user, which you can find here: -

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV*

I expect that if you were to find the relevant entry and delete it from the database, it would solve your problem.

You can read more about that here.