Apple Making It Harder to Avoid Nagging macOS Update Notifications

Thursday May 28, 2020 8:13 am PDT by Eric Slivka

With the release of macOS Catalina 10.15.5 and related security updates for macOS Mojave and High Sierra earlier this week, Apple is making it more difficult for users to ignore available software updates and remain on their current operating system versions.

catalina software update
Included in the release notes for macOS Catalina 10.15.5 is the following:

- Major new releases of macOS are no longer hidden when using the softwareupdate(8) command with the --ignore flag

This change also affects macOS Mojave and macOS High Sierra after installing Security Update 2020-003.

For users still running an earlier major macOS version like Mojave or High Sierra, the Software Update pane in System Preferences typically displays a prominent upgrade button for Catalina and a notification badge on the System Preferences icon in the Dock, but until now knowledgeable users have been able to hide those items by using the softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina" command in the Terminal app.

After updating to macOS 10.15.5 or Security Update 2020-003, this command no longer works, with Terminal displaying the following message:

Ignoring software updates is deprecated.
The ability to ignore individual updates will be removed in a future release of macOS.

As documented in a discussion thread in our forums, there are some additional commands that can be used to temporarily remove the notifications, but it's clear Apple wants as many users as possible to upgrade their Macs with all of the most recent operating system updates.

Related Forums: macOS High Sierra, macOS Mojave, macOS Catalina

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Top Rated Comments

martyjmclean

84 months ago

Apple are really salty that we don’t like macOS Vista, aren’t they?

Score: 99 Votes (Like | Disagree)

avanpelt

84 months ago

Sorry, Apple. I'm not touching Catalina with a 10 foot pole. I've read and heard too many horror stories. This will be the first macOS release I've skipped entirely since becoming a Mac user in 2008.

Score: 70 Votes (Like | Disagree)

doobydoooby

84 months ago

Hilariously, my 2008 Mac Pro is telling me evey day to upgrade to Catalina despite it definitely not being able to handle it. I can only imagine the carnage if i said yes.

Score: 67 Votes (Like | Disagree)

ouimetnick

84 months ago

Sorry Tim, I’m not going to upgrade to the Catalina Experience. I don’t want Apple Music (a service I don’t use and never will shoved down my throat. I also don’t want Apple TV+ trash shoved in my face either.

I bought the product and I don’t want advertising on my operating system. Already annoying on Mojave. The bugs present in Catalina ad the fact that my 2014 MBP works just fine and continues to receive security updates for the time being isn’t going to incentivize me. Once there are no more security updates, I’ll be forced to upgrade. Hopefully Catalina’s successor will be much better

Score: 65 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Alphazoid

84 months ago

Its the first time i'm still running the previous OS (Mojave) and refuse to upgrade since i started using OS X during Panther. Catalina has been horrendous, and nearly destroyed my data (thankfully i had backups).

Score: 40 Votes (Like | Disagree)