How to turn off update notifications on Mac

You are not ready to update your Mac to the latest Catalina version. If the software update notification annoying you anytime. This article will help you to block and hide the software update notification on your Mac.

1. Change the Preference Settings

• On Apple Menu->System Preferences.
• Click on the Software Update option.
• Then, Click on the Advanced option.
• Now, Uncheck the following options: Check for updates, Download new updates when available, install macOS updates.
• Enter the password if needed.
• Finally, Click on the “OK” button.

2.  Stop Notifications using Terminal

• Open Terminal using Spotlight Search.
• Now, run the following commands and hit on the Enter,

     sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"

• Now, enter your system password and again hit on the Enter.
• Then, again run the following command and hit on the Enter,

     defaults write com.apple.Systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0

     killall Dock

• Finally, Restart your Mac.

That’s it, it will turn Off the software update notification on your mac. If you are ready to update the software on your Mac then you can reset these settings by using the following command.

     sudo softwareupdate --reset-ignored

So, hope you have fixed the software update notification problem? If yes, let me know in the comments. Thank You…

After some unsuccessful googling, followed by loads and loads of digging and grepping through binary files, I stumbled upon a key in a .plist which, when written, appeared to make the system temporarily forget it had any updates to bother me with. Running:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs '{ "com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate" = 0; }'

fixed my issue for now on 10.14.1. Also works in 10.15, 11, 12 (Apparently, you may also have to restart the dock with killall Dock, but I don't remember having to do so).

If you have automatic checking for updates turned on, this might not work for you. Not for long, anyway. In my case, on a fresh install, I went to the settings page to turn off checking for updates, at which time it checked for an update before I could close the page. After running that command again it went away once more, though. Basically, turn off automatic update checks, or it'll come right back and you'll have to run the command again.

Re-running the update checker should undo this. One might be able to find that .plist (I believe it was in /Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist) and set the immutable bit on it/give it read only permissions to prevent it getting modified, but I have no idea what the fallout from that could be. You'd probably not be able to change any other per-user settings anymore.

For years, Apple has nagged users to install the latest software updates on their Mac. These appear as a banner notification that you can’t simply dismiss, you have to restart to apply security and feature updates or select an option to remind you later.

This gets fustrating and is very obtrusive if you don’t install updates as soon as they arrive. In recent versions of macOS, Apple added a dedicated Software Update section within System Preferences but there is no option to hide these notifications.

Hide notifications for major updates

Note that this method may not work correctly on later versions of macOS 10.14 and 10.15 as Apple has deprecated the feature and is making it harder for users to ignore updates.

To hide notifications for major software updates, such as macOS Big Sur, set to come in October, open Terminal and paste the following command. You’ll need to enter your password after:

sudo mv /Library/Bundles/OSXNotification.bundle ~/Documents/ && softwareupdate –ignore macOSInstallerNotification_GM

Stop all update notifications

You have to stop macOS from automatically checking for updates if you want to hide all notifications. This is quite simple and won’t disable updates – you’ll just have to manually check for them.

In macOS High Sierra or earlier, open System Preferences, select App Store and uncheck “Download newly available updates in background“. This will still check for updates but won’t display the dreaded notification.

In macOS Mojave or later, open System Preferences, click Software Update and Advanced Options. Uncheck “Check for Updates“. This will disable all other options but hides notifications.

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