macOS: How to Update Your Mac in the Terminal

If there are spaces at the end of an update name, those will also have to be included. Yeah, Terminal is that picky. Now, to download an update without immediately installing it, change the ‘i’ in the above command with a ‘d’, like so:

Screenshot of Mac Terminal. Update your Mac with a few commands.
Using softwareupdate -h
softwareupdate -d NAME

Finally, to download and install all available updates, use this command:

softwareupdate -i -a

You can further enable or disable your Mac’s scheduled background checks for updates with:

softwareupdate --schedule ON or OFF

You can keep using your Mac while they download, but eventually Terminal will alert you to restart your Mac so the full installation procedure can take place. For a full list of commands you can use with softwareupdate, type:

man softwareupdate or softwareupdate -h

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