macadmin.fraserhess.com

Dialpad, in their own words, an “all-in-one AI-powered customer communications platform” has a Mac app that self-updates. If it attempts to install an update and the logged-in end-user is not an admin, the app prompts for admin credentials. This frustrates end-users and help desks alike.

I was unable to find a workaround for this behavior via Google search or in the Mac Admins Slack. The Dialpad app is an Electron app. After digging around in the contained app.asar file, I found that setting an environment variable named DIALPAD_DISABLE_UPDATES will disable the automatic update mechanism¹. Setting an environment variable for macOS GUI apps is done with launchctl and they do not persist across restarts.

Therefore, I built a launch agent that sets this on behalf of any user and a script to install the launch agent. We added this script to our Dialpad self service policy.

After setting the environment variable, you can read it back.

% launchctl getenv DIALPAD_DISABLE_UPDATES
1

Then when you launch the Dialpad app, the following will be logged to a file in ~/Library/Application Support/Dialpad/logs:

Ignoring update check because of environment variable

Dialpad can, and as a cloud app probably should, be patched. We use Installomator to install and update it. Dialpad app versions can be reported on in Jamf Pro Patching.

1. At the time of publication, this environment variable name was not found in Google search or a search of Mac Admins Slack. ↩︎