re: Botchware: Apple Forcibly Upgrading Macs to macOS Sonoma without User Permission or Input + How to Defeat Upgrades
Apple has no respect for its users these days; Apple vandalized my iMac 5K via a forced unwanted update. Fortunately after some hours I was able to reinstall macOS Monterey.
UPDATE: it’s not clear if the forced/unwanted update issue still exists, or if it has been fixed. Shame on Apple for never acknowledging the headaches it caused me and many others.
Disable macOS Major Software Update Notifications using com.apple.SoftwareUpdate MajorOSUserNotificationDate
You can still upgrade if desired. What this does is set the date before which the sytem will not notify you of a major macOS update eg the annual dumpster fire "upgrade" in October. That’s important, since the way Apple vandalized my iMac was via the notification, which proceeds no matter what you click on.
In Terminal:
First, see what the current status is for software update notifications:
defaults read com.apple.SoftwareUpdate MajorOSUserNotificationDate
Next, set that date to something far in the future. As for myself, I probably never want to update, thus years out from today in 2026:
defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate MajorOSUserNotificationDate -date "2026-02-15 22:00:00 +0000"
The line above can be copied and pasted into Terminal as-is. Or you can change the date to something else.
The 'MajorOSUserNotificationDate' gets changed, now let’s see if that makes it shut up.
MacPro:MPG $ defaults read com.apple.SoftwareUpdate
{
AutoUpdateRetryCount = {
};
MajorOSUserNotificationDate = "2026-02-15 22:00:00 +0000";
}
defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate MajorOSUserNotificationDate -date "2026-02-15 22:00:00 +0000"
Reader Don H writes:
Howard Oakley has been looking further into the problem of unwanted upgrades, and offers the following: https://eclecticlight.co/2024/02/12/can-you-avoid-a-forced-upgrade-to-sonoma/
A few points that I’m reading from that:
1) If you’re blocking the notifications (a worthwhile action), be sure to do so with every user account on the Mac, if more than one user exists.
2) Blocking the notification is not quite the same as blocking an unwanted upgrade - it is simply ‘shooting the messenger’. If Apple really screws up and initiates an upgrade through some other action then the notifications alone aren’t going to reflect that.
3) Creating a bogus installer app to cause an error won’t work with Ventura and later, as those apparently no longer copy an installer into the Applications folder but instead proceed ‘out of sight’ with a more obscured software installation process. The bogus installer will not serve any purpose in that case.
MPG: Howard Oakly is a hard read for some, but his insights are usually spot-on.
What a curious mix of stagnation and advancement the world has become.
...Odysseus is carrying several payloads—some of which belong to NASA and some of which are commercial payloads. Inside one of those commercial payloads is a special data storage disk made with help from the folks here at OWC.
Made with support from OWC, the storage disk aboard Odysseus is a small 15-layer nickel stack microfiche time capsule made by space archival storage company NanoFiche in coordination with Galactic Legacy Labs subsidiary Lunaprise.
The disk contains much of humanity’s knowledge, songs, and messages from more than 1 million people called “Lunagrams.” It is designed to survive for millions of years on the lunar surface, preserving a record of human life on Earth. You can read more about the IM-1 mission here.
...
The Lunagram microfiche. Image credit: Bruce Ha via LinkedIn
WIND: let’s hope this mission succeeds, other recent attempts have failed.
See prior related posts:
Backup Best Practices: How to Use Time Machine Optimally With Other macOS Backups
What to Do Your When Mac’s Time Machine Says Its Backup Drive Is Full.
Clone backups are nominally identical copies (“clones”) of your volume(s), updated incrementally meaning only the stuff that changes.
A clone backup is extremely fast. Only the first backup might take a while since everything has to be copied the first time. But after that first backup, the software is incredibly efficient at only copying the changes, making short work of bringing things up to date.
...
Backup Best Practices: How to Make Fast Clone Backups on a Mac