Check and Install Mac OS X Software Updates from the Terminal

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List All Available Mac Software Updates from Command Line

To get a list of available software updates, type the following command:

-l```
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You will see a list of available updates.
### Installing All Available Updates from Terminal
You can then install all available software updates with the following command:
```sudo softwareupdate -iva

The use of sudo is required to get superuser privileges to actually install the updates.

You can also install only the recommended updates with:

softwareupdate -irv```
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### Installing & Ignoring Specific Software Updates to Mac from Terminal of OS X
Or you can just install specific software updates by specifying the shorthand package name from the previous list, like so:
```sudo softwareupdate -i iPhoneConfigurationUtility-3.2

If there are any updates you want to ignore, you can do so with the –ignore flag, for example:

softwareupdate --ignore iWeb3.0.2-3.0.2```
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If you want to see all the available command line shortcuts for Software Update, just type:
```softwareupdate -h

This is really useful for remotely updating Macs, setting up automated updates via a bash script, or if you just want to geek out.
This tool is available in all versions of OS X and therefore it can be used to update just about any Mac with necessary software updates. This is one way to avoid using the Mac App Store to update a Mac if that is necessary for whatever reason.