Zotero missing on Mac App Store

ajmisquitta · 2025-09-08T14:30:51+00:00

Hi Zotero team,
I just had my Zotero Safari plugin vanish. My Mac (OSX 15.6.1, M1) reported the Zotero app as damaged. When I tried to re-install I realised that the Zotero app is no longer available for Macs on the Apple App Store. It is available for iOS, but not for Macs.

I was able to restore an older version of Zotero, but what's going on with the current version?

dstillman · 2025-09-08T14:47:52+00:00

Zotero has never been available from the Mac App Store. It's available from the download page on this site.

The Zotero Connector for Safari is bundled with the app. Due to a macOS bug will sometimes disappear after when you update the app.

ajmisquitta · 2025-09-08T14:53:10+00:00

Hi thanks @dstillman: if you follow the download page link I get to a "Zotero for Mobile" page:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u30343/n8dw5x15wxhth3g6mf85.png

This seems odd as it basically tells me to get it from the App Store, and it isn't there.

fcheslack · 2025-09-08T14:59:54+00:00

Your browser (presumably via an ad blocking or other content filtering extension) is removing the main part of the download page.

You can download using a different browser, or disable all such extensions and restart Safari. If you do that and the full page is shown, we'd love to hear details of what it was and the settings, because while we've had an occasional report of this we've never been able to reproduce it ourselves.

ajmisquitta · 2025-09-08T15:03:20+00:00

Ah!!! Thanks a lot for that. Indeed I can see it all when I use Firefox.

All the best and thanks for such a quick response!

dstillman · 2025-09-08T15:04:07+00:00

But what Extensions do you have enabled in Safari? We'd really like to figure out why this is happening to people in Safari. (You can tell us in an email to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread if you prefer.)

ajmisquitta · 2025-09-08T16:06:59+00:00

Only Ad Block Pro and DuckDuckGo's Privacy protection.

These have not caused a problem previously, but then I have not gone to the Zotero website for a download in a long time (all updates have been automatic).

Would you need version numbers of these?

dstillman · 2025-09-08T16:07:29+00:00

Right, so it's one of those. Can you disable those one at a time and figure out which one is causing this?

ajmisquitta · 2025-09-08T16:38:42+00:00

It's AdBlock Plus: the way it behaves is a bit non-linear. I need to disable AdBlock Engine to see the Zotero downloads

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u30343/6g9bitfykdvdmo24engh.png

dstillman · 2025-09-09T00:24:52+00:00

It seems like AdBlock Engine is from "AdBlock for Safari", not AdBlock Plus (which you mentioned) or AdBlock Pro (which is what created the "1. Ads" entry selected in your screenshot).

Can you provide a screenshot of the settings window with AdBlock Engine selected? And can you confirm that this problem happens if you disable all other extensions in Safari other than AdBlock Engine?