Determining the version of the OS and applications under OS X

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You can determine the version of applications installed on an OS X system by taking the following steps:
  1. Click on the Apple icon in the upper, left-hand corner of the screen then select About This Mac
  2. Click on More Info; this step is needed on earlier versions of OS X, such as Mountain Lion (version 10.8), but not later versions such as Yosemite (version 10.10)
  3. Click on System Report then select Software and then Applications.

You will see a display similar to the following one:

OS X Applications Installed

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. E.g., below is a partial list of software found on a MacBook Pro; I snipped the rest of the output which was quite lengthy.

$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType
Applications:

    Firefox:

      Version: 31.5.0
      Last Modified: 5/16/14 9:39 AM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: Firefox 31.5.0
      Location: /Applications/Firefox.app

    Adobe Flash Player Install Manager:

      Version: 17.0.0.134
      Last Modified: 4/6/15 2:20 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): No
      App Store: No
      Location: /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app

    ScanEventHandler:

      Version: 1.2.0
      Last Modified: 4/6/15 2:07 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: Copyright (c) 2013-2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
      Location: /Library/Printers/hp/Utilities/Handlers/ScanEventHandler.app

    HP Scanner 3:

      Version: 4.8.1
      Last Modified: 4/6/15 2:07 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: Copyright © 2011-2014, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
      Location: /Library/Image Capture/Devices/HP Scanner 3.app

    hpdot4d:

      Version: 4.10.3
      Last Modified: 4/6/15 2:07 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: hpdot4d 4.10.3, Copyright (c) 2005-2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
      Location: /Library/Printers/hp/Frameworks/HPDeviceModel.framework/Versions/4.0/Runtime/hpdot4d.app

    HP Utility:

      Version: 5.23.4
      Last Modified: 4/6/15 2:07 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: HP Utility 5.23.4, Copyright (c) 2005-2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
      Location: /Library/Printers/hp/Utilities/HP Utility.app

    Safari:

      Version: 6.2.3
      Last Modified: 4/6/15 2:00 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: 6.2.3, Copyright © 2003-2014 Apple Inc.
      Location: /Applications/Safari.app

...

You can use the command with grep to obtain the version of a particular program by piping the output of the command to grep then displaying the next 2 lines after the match on the name followed by a colon, e.g. grep "Safari:" -A 2 would match the start of the Safari section of the output and display the version which will be on the second line after the application name. E.g.:

$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep "Safari:" -A 2
    Safari:

      Version: 6.2.3

If you wanted to display the full output for Safari, you could use -A 8 to get the following eight lines, instead of -A 2.

$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep "Safari:" -A 8
    Safari:

      Version: 6.2.3
      Last Modified: 4/6/15 2:00 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: 6.2.3, Copyright © 2003-2014 Apple Inc.
      Location: /Applications/Safari.app

Filtering the output of the system_profiler command with grep can be used to determine the version of many applications. E.g., if Microsoft Excel for Mac is installed:

$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep "Excel:" -A 8
    Microsoft Excel:

      Version: 12.3.1
      Last Modified: 9/23/11 6:41 PM
      Kind: Universal
      64-Bit (Intel): No
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: 12.3.1 (110725), © 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
      Location: /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Excel.app
--
    Open XML for Excel:

      Version: 12.3.1
      Last Modified: 9/23/11 6:41 PM
      Kind: PowerPC
      64-Bit (Intel): No
      App Store: No
      Get Info String: 12.3.1 (110725), © 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
      Location: /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office Converter Support/Open XML for Excel.app

You can also check the version number for applications by looking in the version.plist file for an application, such as Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011, as explained at Extracting numbers from a text string with grep.

References:

  1. Command line arguments
    mozillaZine Knowledge Base
  2. Command Line Options
    Last updated by: TTO, March 13, 2015 5:59:19 PM
    Mozilla Developer Network (MDN)
  3. Extracting numbers from a text string with grep
    Date: Wednesday March 16, 2016
    MoonPoint Support

 

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