How can I restore missing top icons and access purchases in App Store on High Sierra iMac?

Hello, so the solution which worked for me was to wipe out entire SSD. Do new partition and install High Sierra from scratch (install USB flash). I don't know why that happened, but I'm guessing some file corruption due to SSD. I have TRIM enabled, but I'm just guessing. However now (after clean install) is everything working fine again and the App Store is behaving like normal. I can install all the apps I wanted and the icons on top are present. Have a fine start of a new week everybody.

From my experience it's working even on Yosemite too. The issue is probably prevalent for Sierra & High Sierra Macs. Catalina and Mojave is fine too. MAS app on Yosemite is larger in size if I look at the apps on Yosemite and High Sierra and compare them. Some content for viewing in the window High Sierra downloads from online repository while in Yosemite it's bundled in the MAS app. May be that's the difference. It's only bug in providing the viewable content in GUI while the app store isn't really flawed. Just the interface. I tried to copy older app on the MAC where app store wasn't working, but if I run command for update in the CLI the copied app was recognised and updated correctly and working.

According to this thread it's Apples side issue and it's experiencing more users. On some systems it's partially fixed.

Mac App Store Broken on macOS 10.14 and Earlier

I digging deeper into this problem. With some coding skills. Do if I successfully debug what's happening I will let you now. I tried all what was written on internet, but this is some other issue as ordinary. However the picture icons are accessible with direct links from mzstatic domain. There's something else behind the scenes and it's bothering. Look for Disk Diet to clear caches at least. Something is blocking connection in the regard even ISP connection is fine. Files corruption is not the case. The App Store is probably screwed. You can install homebrew with mas so you can install software through CLI as workaround until we find solution for this. Have a nice day.

Probably this won't help much, but I did updates via terminal with this command sudo softwareupdate -iaR --verbose

However as I mentioned before I had also issue with 2FA and needed to check all settings on other working computer and remove old numbers and so on.

I also tried to copy app from older drive (when I had missing the top icons) and check whether the app store registers it and updates it even without properly working GUI. This was working.

The GUI was fixed for me after I've done the clean reinstall. Now I'm thinking if I can copy larger amounts of data back if it wasn't some drive internal mechanism for sector reallocation what caused for me not working GUI for app store or if it was something on Apple's side like the security certificates.

I'm not clear with that because I tried literally everything and don't know what was the primary cause of issue or if the issue is persistent to some level, but is hidden.

Hello,

yes I've tried everything. With VPN, without VPN, connect PC through mobile carrier, safe mode, clear caches, reinstall from USB (not clean install, but to have system files integrity restored) and so on,.. with no help. However I have one older HDD where's Yosemite and tried to boot from it and there was App Store working, but wasn't able to log in because of not working 2FA, but the icons were present. So that's why I plan to do clean install of High Sierra and see if it helps. May be it's some file corruption or something. I don't think Apple will let users so long without working App Store even on older systems so there's something else underlying this issue.

Still the issue is present on High Sierra, but older Sierra and newer Mojave are OK. I hope Apple will fix this somehow. Too bad we can't access purchases on perfectly fine computers. It's shame for Apple as well.

Again I'm putting here Feedback link so anyone experiencing same issue can submit the feedback to Apple.

Tell Apple your problem

So just tu update the case. I've found install USB of High Sierra which I had prepared in 2022 for clean install. Today I tried to start the install from running OS, but it didn't helped with the App Store issue. I had updated the system via CLI sudo softwareupdate -iaR --verbose and the updates went OK, but App Store is still without the icons. I don't know, but may be clean install will help with formatting the drive. If not I will go with Slackware Linux, but will miss my editing tools. I had also MB 12" wit i7 and 16GB RAM, but it's very slow with new OS. It's shame Apple won't you access the SW you've bought. This is why I don't like centralised stores. What's funny when I boot from old external HDD where's old version of Yosemite and open the App Store the icons are visible however I can't login. So I dunno if Apple dropped App Store for High Sierra in February 2025 because in January it was still working.

Thank you for response. I'll try contact Apple anyway and if they did not respond I will try to reformat drive and do clean install. However I looked into console and there're messages that App Store can't establish connection with server so I don't think it's problem on my side because I tried with more carriers. Have a nice day.