Macjitsu: Resolve Mac App Store Hash Mismatch Errors in a Snap

I was upgrading some of the applications I purchased from the Mac App Store the other day and I ran into a little problem. I kept receiving an error message stating that I had encountered a “hash mismatch” from the store each time I tried to update Evernote. I wasn’t able to find out why something on my Mac wasn’t matching something the store was looking for, but I did figure out how to fix it. Luckily the fix was easy and I’m going to share it with you today.

The other day I tried to update my copy of Evernote from the Mac App Store by clicking the update button.

I got an unpleasant surprise after entering my Mac App Store user id and password:

Apparently something was amiss. Generally speaking errors like these tend to mean that something didn’t sync up between my Mac and the App Store. Hashes are generally used to validate two different files and this time that wasn’t possible. Unfortunately this can be a frequent problem with Mac App Store updates which I hope Apple will get fixed soon.

Luckily you can easily fix it. The first thing you’ll need to do is to quit the Mac App Store and Evernote if you still have either of them open.

Now open the Applications folder on your Mac startup disk and find the application the Hash mismatch error occurred on. In my case it was Evernote so I selected it:

I selected the icon by clicking on it once and then I pressed Command+delete. This will delete the file and move it to the Trash. If you prompted to enter a user ID and password do so by using an available administrator’s account on your Mac. Now press Shift+Command+delete to empty the Trash.

Finally relaunch the Mac App Store, click on the Purchases tab and find the application you just deleted. In my case I selected Evernote.