Mac users report App Store update page on High Sierra broken or not displaying correctly (workarounds inside)

Several macOS users are having trouble with the App Store updates page on some older versions of the OS like High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan, and quite possibly even versions that date further back.

The updates page looks something straight out of a website from the early 2000s and is comprised mainly of text with little to no sign of the use of any stylesheet.

In the last couple of days it seems that my update page in App Store is missing its stylesheet. The update page (and only that) is looking strange. Sometimes it helps to shut the app and open it again after a minute – sometimes NOT. What could be the reason? I am running High Sierra on a 2017 iMac
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I noticed this last night. When I open the App Store in High Sierra, the “Updates” tab shows the information like it is missing CSS formatting. I just looked again today and it is still broken. The other tabs look fine, but when I open “Updates” it looks terrible. I am still able to download updates but something is messed up. This is what it looks like this.
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Of course, the macOS App Store updates page is essentially a webpage that is designed to give the feeling of an app. But a webpage is still a webpage, and needs a CSS stylesheet to look pretty.

And that is something that appears to have gone missing for some reason.

It is worth mentioning here that the issue only seems to be occurring on versions macOS High Sierra and older as there are no complaints from the Mohave and above camp.

From this, it can be said that the issue has something to do with the App Store being rendered out of date.

Is there any workaround available that is confirmed to work for this annoying issue? Not really, other than updating your Mac machine to the latest available macOS version.

Or you can try deleting the App Store cache by opening Finder and heading over to “~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore”. Next, move all cache files to trash and restart your App Store.

It won’t be surprising if the workaround doesn’t help though since the issue is likely a server-side one.

Further, versions like High Sierra have already reached EOL and aren’t even receiving security updates anymore. Thus, it is unclear if Apple will ever resolve the broken High Sierra App Store issue.

Still, one can always drop feedback for Apple through the macOS support channel and hope for the best. As always, we will continue tracking the matter for further updates so stay tuned to PiunikaWeb.

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