Allow mas to install free apps that haven't been installed before.

[bgupta]

My use case is that I am curating a Brewfile for my team, and I'd like to automate installation of mas apps for new team members. (I understand this would likely be difficult for paid or subscription apps.)

[nidegen]

Did you try to use it correctly? You can either use
mas install 497799835 # 497799835 is the id of Xcode
or
mas install lucky Xcode # installs the first hit of an app matching this name

A user will need to be signed in to the AppStore with an AppleId though. mas cant get around that.

[bgupta]

It seems "lucky" isn't yet supported by homebrew-bundle yet. Ticket opened. Homebrew/homebrew-bundle#335

Ignoring that, I just tested using:
mas lucky "WhatsApp Desktop"

I got the following error.:
This redownload is not available for this Apple ID either because it was bought by a different user or the item was refunded or cancelled.

(I choose WhatsApp Desktop because it's free and I've never installed it before.)

[phatblat]

mas can currently install any app that has been purchased by the current Apple ID, regardless of whether it has been installed on a Mac before or not.

This won't be possible for apps that haven't been "purchased" by the current Apple ID as mas is not able to "purchase" apps, even free ones. mas is already a hack ontop of a couple of private Apple frameworks. We may some day figure out how to get a purchase to work, but there are security and ethics concerns with that. It's weird that Apple handles free apps like paid but it's probably so that they can validate the age of the user.

[phatblat]

This feature has been added as the new purchase command in 1.7.0