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Troubleshooting: Updater has errors retrieving information in Visual Studio for Mac

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Important

Visual Studio for Mac was retired on August 31, 2024 in accordance with Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy. While you can continue to work with Visual Studio for Mac, there are several other options for developers on Mac such as the preview version of the new C# Dev Kit extension for VS Code.

Learn more about support timelines and alternatives.

On a rare occasion, you may see the error message "Error retrieving update information" displayed when you try to update Visual Studio for Mac. If this happens, try the following steps to fix it:

  • Check your internet connection. A drop in the connection is the most common cause of this error.
    • If a component fails to download, you can click the retry button next to the component name to try the download again.
  • Restart the IDE.
  • If you continue to see this error message, you can also try to update using the Installer, if the .dmg is still on your machine, or you can download it from visualstudio.com
    • The installer will update any installed components on your machine.
    • By re-running the installer, you'll also be able to install any missing components that you had not previously installed.
  • You can also try clearing your cached downloads, by deleting the file located at ~/Library/Caches/VisualStudio/8.0/TempDownload/index.xml.
  • If you're working with an older version of Visual Studio for Mac, you might have other version numbers under the VisualStudio directory. Delete the index.xml file in these paths as well.