Anyone who has owned a Mac has at some point experienced this issue. These days with Apple putting almost everything that is vital and essential for your work as well as for your Mac’s health there, it’s imperative that you have good access to the App Store. In fact, soon enough that may be the only place you will be able to download apps from, if Apple has anything to say about it!

So, we thought it necessary to put together a simple how-to fix guide to help you either resolve this issue or at least teach you how to solve it, if it does happen in the future.

Reasons Why Your Mac Won’t Connect To The App Store

Contrary to what you may think, it’s not an uncommon problem. Most Mac users at some point have had issues accessing the Mac App Store for one reason or another and these tend to be the most common problems:

Faulty Internet Connection: When you can’t access the Mac app store, the error message mostly indicated towards you having some sort of a connection issue. Could be due to an unstable wi-fi signal, slow VPN issue or perhaps your usb 3.0 ethernet adapter is faulty? Either way, you need to first ensure that your internet connection is working fine.

Mac App Store is experiencing issues: This is another common reason. It could be something is wrong with the store and for whatever reason, it’s down and inaccessible. In this case, the problem lies with Apple, who will most likely be working to fix it. You can also check their System Status page for an update.

Sign in/Log in Issue: Your Mac may still require you to sign in directly to the App Store, even if you are already signed in to your Mac using your Apple ID. If you can’t sign in directly, try logging out and signing back in with your Apple ID on your Mac. This is a common glitch that may fix the problem. 

Other Mac Related Problems: It’s possible that your Mac is presenting other issues that could be affecting the Mac app functioning properly. In this case, a Mac restart should help.

How To Fix The Problem

Before we dive in, it’s important to realise that in some cases, it’s possible the app may no longer be available and the error message is just pertaining to that and not to a problem with your Mac. If that’s not the case and the app is still actually available, then go ahead and check out some of our solutions below:

Check your WiFi Connection

In most cases, your Mac may probably just be on an unreliable connection. If you have some internet connection issues when you attempt to log in to the Mac Store then you can try to toggle your WiFi connectivity. You can do this by:

1. Clicking the Wifi logo on the Mac menu barat the top right side of your screen
2. Select “Turn WiFi Off”
3. Turn the WiFi back on again.

If you are using a VPN connection, try turning that off and then try to access the Mac App Store, that may fix the issue.

Update your MacOS Software

In some cases, there could be an issue with your current OS system that’s causing such glitches. It’s common and it is for this reason, updating your Mac whenever new updates becomes available, is an essential thing to do. Some of these bugs may also be popping up in multiple Mac users around the world and usually Apple updates it’s software, fixing such prevalent problems. So, you can go to your ‘System Preferences’ the click ‘Software Update’ to check if there are any new updates you need to configure.

Other Mac Related Problems

If you still cannot connect to the App Store, but you’ve check and confirmed that your internet connection is not the problem, then we suggest unplugging everything connected to your Mac. This also includes all devices like TV or printers that may be connected through a USB C HDMI, for example. It could be some of these devices are somehow interfering with proper functionality for whatever reason. Once you’ve done this, restart your Mac and try accessing the App Store, chances are, it should work after that.

If not, then it may be software related in which case conducting a quick diagnostic scan with a third party app like CleanMyMac X, should help you figure out the problem. Such diagnostic tools will usually help put your Mac back in proper working order, whatever the issue it may have. For instance, it can help cleans e your Mac’s data storage, reset any recently changed preferences back to normalise, clear system junk, etc.

Most importantly, an app like CleanMyMac X has an ‘Updater’ function that allows you to sidestep using the Mac App Store and update or even delete some of your current apps!

Conclusion

In most cases, the reason why your Mac may not connect to the app store tends to either be a localised issue with your connectivity or in some rare cases, it’s a temporary problem with the App Store itself. In the event, you still can’t access the store, you can always directly download whatever app you want directly from the app owner’s website, using a manual dmg file download. Although, we don’t recommend doing this, as you never know which apps could be carrying viruses in the process.

However, if you do follow some of the suggestions we’ve laid out here, you should be downloading apps form the Mac App Store in no time.