What happens to MacUpdater on 31 December 2026

Sales and support ended in January 2026. The readme says “As expected MacUpdater 3 has been discontinued on 2026-01-01” and “Technical support for MacUpdater is no longer available”. The 3.5.0 release notes call it “the last and final update to MacUpdater 3” and add that “There will be no MacUpdater 4 or any continuation of the MacUpdater product from us”.

Version 3.5 stays free. The FAQ says “MacUpdater 3.5 is free to use for everyone and indefinitely”, including the features that used to be Pro.

The same FAQ says what the free version is still good for, and for how long. It can report updates “only during 2026 as the database server will be turned off after another year”, and the number of apps it can update “drops from ~7000 to ~3500 and will further decrease instead of increasing”, because nobody verifies the entries any more.

Nothing has been added since. The CoreCode news page has three entries about the end of MacUpdater, the last dated 1 January 2026 with a note about an improved build posted on 7 January, and nothing after that. There is no entry about the server.

Floodtide’s reading. CoreCode has not said this.

CoreCode has never written what MacUpdater does once the server is off. Its FAQ says only that 3.5 “works (mostly) without our server-backend”, and no release note, FAQ entry or news item describes a message the app will show.

Our expectation is a quiet failure. The app still opens, because it is an ordinary signed Mac app and nothing in it expires. Scans stop finding updates, because every version check goes through the server that is being switched off. And there will be no notice inside the app telling you why, because nobody is left to ship one. The most likely experience is the same list of apps as before, with nothing new appearing for weeks before you notice.

Until then, the updates 3.5 does show have not been checked by anyone since January 2026. CoreCode says so itself: its daily maintenance has stopped and it no longer verifies updates. A version it reports may be a beta, or may be wrong.

Some 2026 articles say MacUpdater's database “went dark” on 1 January 2026, while others give 31 December 2026, and both are describing something real. January 2026 was the end of sales, support and daily maintenance, announced in April 2025 and carried out as planned. The server behind the version checks is a separate thing, and CoreCode's own readme and release notes, ifun.de and mac4ever all give the same date for switching it off: 31 December 2026.

1. Keep MacUpdater installed. It is free, it still runs, and nothing conflicts with having a second updater beside it. Floodtide never touches its data, so there is no reason to remove anything until you are ready.
2. Note or export your ignore list. MacUpdater keeps the apps you told it to ignore in its preferences, the com.corecode.MacUpdater domain, under the key its FAQ documents as IgnoreApps; defaults read com.corecode.MacUpdater IgnoreApps in Terminal prints it. The same FAQ shows how its command line tool writes your whole app list to a file with macupdater_client list --json, and Copy in the Edit menu copies the names of the apps you have selected. Any of the three gives you a record to work from.
3. Run Floodtide's free scan. Download Floodtide, open it, and it lists your installed apps and which of them it can update, with no import and no account. To look a single app up first, search the coverage list.

• Sources, not a database. Floodtide reads each app’s own update source: Homebrew casks, Sparkle feeds, GitHub Releases and the Mac App Store, where it installs updates in place through a privileged helper. A hand-researched feed of about 2,000 apps covers the rest, and an app no source can resolve is named as uncovered rather than guessed at.
• Paid once. A licence is £10.99 once for 3 Macs. The Tide, an optional add-on at £9.99 a year, adds newly requested apps to the feed; nothing that is free today ever moves behind it.
• Scanning stays free. The 14-day trial is the full app. After it, scanning and seeing what is outdated stay free; buying unlocks installing.
• No account. There is nothing to sign up for and no card to enter before the first scan. Floodtide is a native Mac app for macOS 13 or later, Intel and Apple silicon, signed with a Developer ID and notarised by Apple, made by Raf at bhopstudio in the UK.