The Cross-Device App Clutter
Apple heavily promotes a unified ecosystem through your Apple ID. If you own an iMac at the office and a MacBook for travel, they are likely signed into the same iCloud account. By default, the Mac App Store includes a setting that automatically downloads any application you purchase (or download for free) on one Mac onto all of your other Macs.
If you download a massive video editing suite on your powerful iMac, your lightweight MacBook will suddenly start downloading gigabytes of data in the background, filling up its smaller hard drive with software you have no intention of using on the go. To maintain separate software environments on your different machines, you must disable this automatic syncing.
How to Disable Automatic App Downloads
You can turn off this feature directly within the Mac App Store settings.
- Open the App Store application on the Mac you want to protect from unwanted downloads.
- In the top menu bar, click on App Store and select Settings… (or Preferences).
- A small popup window will appear.
- Look for the checkbox labelled Automatically download apps purchased on other Mac computers.
- Uncheck the box.
Note: You can leave “Automatic Updates” checked if you still want the apps you intentionally installed on this specific machine to stay current.
Once you uncheck this box, the App Store will stop syncing your purchases. Installing an app on your iMac will no longer trigger a background download on your MacBook, allowing you to manage your storage and software independently on each machine.