Home
> Mac administration, macOS > Preventing the macOS Catalina upgrade advertisement from appearing in the Software Update preference pane on macOS Mojave
Preventing the macOS Catalina upgrade advertisement from appearing in the Software Update preference pane on macOS Mojave
Not yet ready for macOS Catalina in your environment, but you’ve trained your folks to look at the Software Update preference pane to see if there’s available updates? One of the ways Apple is advertising the macOS Catalina upgrade is via the Software Update preference pane in System Preferences:
If you want to prevent that advertising banner from appearing, run the following command with root privileges:
softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"
You should see text appear which looks like this:
Ignored updates:
(
"macOS Catalina"
)
The advertisement banner from the Software Update preference pane should now be removed.
Categories: Mac administration, macOS
Leave a comment
Recent Comments
 | Ben LeRoy on Losing a giant |
 | Peter-Erik on Downloading installer packages… |
 | nathanhaggard on Losing a giant |
 | andras0602 on Disabling login window clock d… |
 | Jeff on Losing a giant |
Der Flounder 
Couple of things to note, from my testing: there is still a red “1” showing on the Sys Prefs dock icon; and Software Update shows “1 update” in the Apple menu, even though Catalina has been hidden in the actual SU window.
I can confirm the red “1” that remains. Which will annoy users who’ll keep checking for what’s missing…
This worked great! Now if only there is a way to remove that pesky red badge!
I got rid of the red 1 by killing the dock process after running the command Rich talked about.
You can get rid of the red “1” badge that appears in the System Prefs Dock icon and System Preferences “Software Update” section by running the following command as the user:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0
If the System Preferences icon is on the dock, restarting the dock will refresh the System Preferences icon and get rid of the red “1” badge.
That works, but it comes back immediately after opening software update again. Despite it saying no updates are available, the “1” always comes back. If anyone knows of a way to permanently hide it, that would be great!
Does this work in High Sierra (assuming the prompt will start appearing in App Store in the coming days there)?
If not then the installer should be able to be blocked with
cd /Applications; sudo echo “placeholderFileDisablesDownloading” > “macOS Catalina.app”; sudo chflags uchg “macOS Catalina.app”
And
cd /Applications; sudo echo “placeholderFileDisablesDownloading” > “macOS Catalina.appdownload”; sudo chflags uchg “macOS Catalina.appdownload”
Will “defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0” disable all notifications? (future)
This is great, but how can we reverse this ‘ignore’ flag if once we’re ready to roll this out?
….It looks to be: “softwareupdate –reset-ignored” but I cannot get it to work 😦
Try adding a second dash in front of reset-ignored “sudo softwareupdate –reset-ignored”
I think you need 2 dashed (–) in front of the reset-ignored command
Thanks guys…it was actually the ‘sudo’ that I was missing ;(
Is it supposed to be “sudo softwareupdate -reset-ignored”?
It didn’t work around here. Any thoughts?
Update:
I rebooted my Mac and now it works.
If we are maintaining an internal sus server, Simply not approving the macOS Catalina package will achieve the same thing, correct?
Computers on my internal sus server are not not showing macOS Catalina.
Use “defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist InactiveUpdates” to see what’s been set to be ignored. Next to roll out a script to turn off Catalina nags department wide…
Where is that 8GB sitting at when it is shown in software update? I don’t see the Catalina installer in /Applications. Should it be in there, is it in another location or doesn’t it download the 8GB until you hit upgrade?
It is in /Applications but it is named macOS Catalina.app, not Install macOS Catalina.app as you would expect it to be based on past years.
@Cashxx: It isn’t local until you hit upgrade. Then it downloads and auto-launches once done.
If you do that command, does it prevent the user from ever downloading Catalina from the App store? I’ve run into this. Its basically stopping Catalina from downloading at all.
From: Der Flounder
Reply-To: Der Flounder
Date: Monday, October 7, 2019 at 4:12 PM
To: Kara Ousley
Subject: [New post] Preventing the macOS Catalina upgrade advertisement from appearing in the Software Update preference pane on macOS Mojave
This email is from outside ECU and may, or may not, be legitimate. Please use your due diligence before taking action. Click for details.
rtrouton posted: “Not yet ready for macOS Catalina in your environment, but you’ve trained your folks to look at the Software Update preference pane to see if there’s available updates? One of the ways Apple is advertising the macOS Catalina upgrade is to make it available”
I’m seeing a side effect. The user cannot upgrade to Catalina through the app store once that ignore command is run. I’m good with that but wanted to make sure everyone was aware.
Can others confirm that the softwareupdate –ignore “macOS Catalina” command will also prevent upgrades via the App Store?
Yes, that is the correct behaviour.
It’s hidden from Software Update. Even if you visit the App Store, search for Catalina and “Get” it will launch Software Update in Sys Prefs and kick an error that the app you are trying to download is unavailable.
You won’t be able to install via this method until you clear the “ignore” flag.
After reversing the ignore flag, i was able to download the maOS Catalina installer but it is not installing. I tested it on two devices and both have same results. The process stops responding as soon as you select the disk and click install. Getting a beck ball spinning. Has anyone else seen this issue ?
I am not seeing that. If I reverse the command, System Preferences immediately displays the Catalina update and I can install it.
If I go in App Store and get Catalina updates, I get “The requested version of macOS is not available.” If I go system Preferences > Software Update, it shows macOS Catalina 10.15 – 8.09gb. It downloads fine but installation is failing consistently on multiple devices. After selecting the disk, the “install macOS Catalina” process stops responding.
In terminal –
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist
InactiveUpdates
(
)