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Some macOS Mojave users are unable to complete purchases in the Mac App Store

While reports of users unable to download apps from the App Store in the wild are few, the common thread seems to be that the problem is contained to users of macOS Mojave 10.14.

When attempting to purchase or download apps from the App Store, users are getting an error that reads, "We could not complete your purchase," followed by the detail text "cancelled." The error has also been reported when a user attempts to update an app. So far, only users who are currently running macOS Mojave 10.14. have reported the issue. There have been no reports of the issue for those running macOS Catalina 10.15.

We could not complete your purchase

AppleInsider was first notified of the problem by a tipster pointing to the Apple support forums,. Sporadic mentions of the issue can be found on social media as well.

Users have reported attempting to clear the cache and certificates as well as signing in and out, but to no avail. No one has reported that they have solved the problem.

Of the 31 installations running Mojave that AppleInsider has access to, only one machine and one iCloud account has the issue. The same iCloud account used on a different machine has no problems downloading, so the issue seems unrelated to an iCloud account. The issue is also not related to a recent update.



14 Comments

iwans 11 Years · 3 comments

I also had this problem last two days on three MacBooks with 10.14.6, but it seems to work again now.

rcfa 17 Years · 1123 comments

I have Catalina, and updates show up, but won’t download.
Didn‘t try to purchase something.

Friend of mine has the same problem; no idea if he’s on Catalina or Mojave.

JMStearnsX2 7 Years · 90 comments

I work in my company's IT Dept, this starting becoming widespread in our organization yesterday. Tried lots of different angles, got some advice from Apple Enterprise I'm trying out now.

JMStearnsX2 7 Years · 90 comments

Nice to know others are having this, means it's not our network.

chasm 10 Years · 3624 comments

Update: I was having this issue on my Mojave machine earlier today, but it now works for me as of 5:08 ET.

Further info: had not seen this issue in days past, but as I don't use the Mojave machine (a 2012 MBP) very much these days I didn't notice any pending updates. Today (21-May) I had two and got the same error message as described in the article. Shrugged, went back to work on my Catalina machine, checked a couple of hours later, still unsuccessful. Per update above, I checked moments after reading the article, and it seems to work exactly as expected now.