Turning off upgrade notifications on MacOS Catalina

Although Apple advises you to keep your computer up to date to make it as secure as possible, you might not be in a hurry to upgrade to Catalina. And that’s not surprising: every now and then you hear about problems with this version and learn that 32-bit applications do not work properly on it. But that doesn’t mean that your computer will stop reminding you that there is an up-to-date update.

In this article, we will tell you how to finally get rid of these notifications. Here’s your quick step-by-step guide on turning them off:

How to turn off notifications

The first thing to do is to disable the update check. To do this:

1. Click on the apple logo → “About this Mac” → “Software Update” → “Advanced”. 
2. Uncheck all the checkboxes and press “OK” to accept the changes.
3. Next, open the application “Terminal” (folder “Programs” → “Utilities”). One by one, copy and paste the commands below, pressing “Enter” after each line.

• sudo softwareupdate –ignore “macOS Catalina”. This command forces the system to ignore the update. You will then have to enter the administrator password and press “Enter” to confirm the action.
• defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0. This command removes the update counter from the System Settings application.
• killall Dock. It restarts the dock, applying the settings, without having to restart the computer.

If you decide to switch to Catalina, simply open the App Store and download the update from there. To return system update reminders, open “Terminal” again and enter the undo command:

• sudo softwareupdate –reset-ignored.