You can determine the version of applications installed on an OS X system by clicking on the Apple icon in the upper, left-hand corner of the screen then selecting About This Mac, then More Info, then System Report, then Software, and then clicking on Applications beneath Software. You will see a display similar to the following one:
If you wish to determine the version number of an app from the command line,
if the application supports command line options, you may be able to use
one such as -v or -version to determine the version.
Or you can use the system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType
command to obtain a similar comprehensive list.
E.g., here are a few commands to determine the operating system version and the version of a few common applications under OS X from a command prompt, which can be obtained using the Terminal application.
Determine the OS version with sw_vers.
$ sw_vers ProductName: Mac OS X ProductVersion: 10.8.5 BuildVersion: 12F45
The Wikipedia OS X article provides the names given by Apple to each version. E.g., OS X 10.8.5 is called "Mountain Lion".
Determine the version of Java with java -version
$ java -version java version "1.6.0_65" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.65-b04-462, mixed mode)
Determine the version of Firefox with
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -v or
-version.
$ /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -v Mozilla Firefox 31.5.0 $ /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -version Mozilla Firefox 31.5.0
Determine the version of
GNU Image Manipulation Program
(GIMP) with
/Applications/Gimp.app/Contents/MacOS/gimp --version or
/Applications/Gimp.app/Contents/MacOS/gimp -v with the
-v option providing more details.
$ /Applications/Gimp.app/Contents/MacOS/gimp --version Setting up environment... Enabling internal python... Locale black magic... Launching GIMP... GNU Image Manipulation Program version 2.8.10 $ /Applications/Gimp.app/Contents/MacOS/gimp -v Setting up environment... Enabling internal python... Locale black magic... Launching GIMP... GNU Image Manipulation Program version 2.8.10 git-describe: GIMP_2_8_8-55-g9bb7eb0 using GEGL version 0.2.1 (compiled against version 0.2.1) using GLib version 2.38.2 (compiled against version 2.38.2) using GdkPixbuf version 2.30.1 (compiled against version 2.30.1) using GTK+ version 2.24.22 (compiled against version 2.24.22) using Pango version 1.36.0 (compiled against version 1.36.0) using Fontconfig version 2.11.0 (compiled against version 2.11.0) using Cairo version 1.12.16 (compiled against version 1.12.16)
If you would like to see all of the available command line options for
GIMP, you can use /Applications/Gimp.app/Contents/MacOS/gimp -?,
or -h, or --help, instead of the -?.
You can get the version for many applications at once using the command
system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType.
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