If you wish to know what updates are available for a Mac OS X system, you can use the system software update tool, softwareupdate, to do so by issuing the command
sudo softwareupdate -l, if the
account you are logged in under has administrative privileges; if so, enter
the password for that account when prompted. A command line prompt is
available on OS X by running the terminal application found in the
Applications/Utilities folder.
$ sudo softwareupdate -l Password: Software Update Tool Copyright 2002-2010 Apple 2015-04-09 22:51:06.156 softwareupdate[30930:3903] No alternate URLs found for packageId MobileDevice Software Update found the following new or updated software: * RemoteDesktopClient-3.8.2 v1.1 Remote Desktop Client Update (3.8.2 v1.1), 7123K [recommended] * SecUpd2015-004MtLion-1.0 Security Update 2015-004 (1.0), 179583K [recommended] [restart] * Safari6.2.5MountainLion-6.2.5 Safari (6.2.5), 59025K [recommended] * AirPortUtility-6.3.1 AirPort Utility (6.3.1), 21104K [recommended] * iTunesXPatch-12.1.2 iTunes (12.1.2), 101172K [recommended] * Mac App Store Update-1.0 Mac App Store Update (1.0), 3697K [recommended] [restart]
In the example output above, you can see that installing some of the updates will require a restart afterwards to have the updates take effect.
If you don't precede the command with sudo, you will see a
message informing you that the command must be run as root.
$ softwareupdate softwareupdate: Must be run as root
For a list of available options for the command, you can use
sudo softwareupdate -h.
$ sudo softwareupdate -h Password: usage: softwareupdate <mode> [<args> ...] -l | --list List all appropriate updates -d | --download Download Only -i | --install Install <label> ... specific updates -a | --all all appropriate updates -r | --recommended only recommended updates --ignore <label> ... Ignore specific updates --reset-ignored Clear all ignored updates --schedule (on | off) Set automatic checking -v | --verbose Enable verbose output -h | --help Print this help
