Apple - Can I cancel a download of a Mac Store app?

Specifically in Lion, here's how to do it:

1. Go to Launchpad, click and hold on the downloading item
2. All icons will start wiggling
3. Click the (X) on the download

or

• Hold down the Option key from the “Purchases” menu in the Mac App Store, this causes the “Pause” button to turn into “Cancel”. See this article for detail.

It will ask for a confirmation. I confirmed delete, and it was still there - a reboot made it disappear, but I suppose you could restart just Launchpad as well.

1. Quit App Store app.

2. Delete ~/Library/Application Support/AppStore folder.

3. To avoid App Store still display you have downloaded x bytes of y bytes, four solutions :

   • Disregards.
   • Kill storeagent process (type killall storeagent into Terminal).
   • Logout / login.
   • Reboot.

With Lion it's shadowed under random folder /private/var/folders/<three level random folders>/com.apple.appstore/<again random folder name>/<apple server name package>.pkg. Well…

1. Open Launchpad.
2. Find your app.
3. Keep alt key down.
4. Click on cross to delete it.

Another way to do this by enabling the AppStore Debug menu.

1. Sign out of AppStore.

2. Quit AppStore.

3. Open a terminal and execute the following command:

   defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

4. Open AppStore again and a Debug menu is now present.

5. Debug Menu -> Reset Application.

This will reset the current state of the AppStore, including current downloads. You will have to sign back in to see available downloads.

In my case I was able to stop the not yet finished download of XCode 4.0.1 in favor of just starting up the Xcode 4.1 download (since Lion only runs 4.1).

I wish I could have done Debug Menu -> Show Download Folder and just deleted the directory in com.apple.AppStore that was obviously 4.0.1 (based on size), but this didn't register in the AppStore. I wonder if the sqllite file in that same directory is where this status is stored.

If you are not comfortable leaving the debug menu enabled just run the above terminal command again, this time setting it to false.