My Mac is refusing to update new versions of apps. (Mojave) The App Store shows programs that have updates. I click on update and get the circling icon but the download does not start.
I’ve gone here and tried all the steps except the last one, call apple. Suggestions before I call Apple?
Something similar has been happening to me for a couple of months on Big Sur (there is a thread about it around here somewhere where other people were reporting the same issue). I’ll have an app, which usually seems to be Day One, but it has happened with other apps as well, where it won’t install. The difference for me is that they look like they download, but when they get to 100% installed, they go back to the update available status. It always clears itself up after a week or so, so I never worry about it. Never figured out how to force it though.
So I am no help, but other people are having similar issues.
+1
Same here. I’m also on Mojave. Happens once in a while. First time I tried a whole bunch of stuff to try to fix it. Nothing worked. Eventually goes away. I suggest you save your precious time and just wait it out.
It’s been happening to me on Mojave as well. I tried signing out and signing back in and restarting of which none have worked.
This is happening for a very long time on my old Mac mini running macOS High Sierra.
Never found a solution… 
A solution that has worked for me – though very clunky is
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppStore.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.appstored.plist
The App Store reliability is horrible.
Thanks!
This worked for me - I have a couple of apps that haven’t been able to update for weeks.
I faced this issue on Mojave for the longest time and was hoping that the upgrade to Big Sur would fix it. Everything seemed fine for a while but now am seeing this, only on one app so far though! 
Not yet. I thought I’d wait for a few days to see if the issue gets resolved on its own.
Happening all the time on Big Sur. Every once in a while it’ll let something through. But once it decides to update, it just works 
Today I booted into Safe mode. Ran the “maintenance” set of Onyx utilities. Then booted as normal. Almost immediately, the App Store became aware of all the updates it had not flagged in “Updates” – but CleanMyMacX had known all about them. And, when I ran “Update All” they all completed in less than 2 minutes.
I had this issue and updated to the latest Big Sur release and it’s send to have been resolved
Does unfortunately not work for my old Mac mini (running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 - latest supported version).
After performing all those steps the Mac still refuses to update Spark fro 2.9.15 to 2.9.16 
(No update in the Updates tab, an “Update” button on the Spark page, but an endless spinner when clicking on that button)
I had a similar issue with GoodNotes 5 on Mac refusing to update. I ended up deleting the app and emptying the trash, and then downloading the thing. Of course GoodNotes keeps it’s data in iCloud so there was no lost data issue – which might not be the case with Spark if you deleted it.
I have indeed done that for other Apps in the past, but Spark would have to download a lot of data from scratch…
Ok… I started this thread… basically did nothing as far as I know… then all of a sudden several apps that were refusing to upgrade started doing the deed perfectly. (The down time, refusing to update was several days.)
