Is there a way to disable macOS 26 Tahoe upgrade nagging?

two botts wrote:

Because the red dot is a red flag of annoyance and frustration, NOT a must do that I need to be reminded of.. Tried Tahoe, not a fan in any respects. Sequoia is brilliant, tried and true, why would I want to be incessantly reminded of a fail every hour of the day and at every boot up. These Apple terms you mention, are they the same ones allowing ads to appear in apps, Safari and the like. Not a fan.

This is a user-to-user support forum. That's not something that anyone here can fix. If we knew of a way to hide the badge, or block the notifications, we would tell you. But we don't.

As far as I'm concerned, that little red dot on System Settings means I'm using a stable OS version. If you don't like the dot, you can move System Settings out of the Dock. You could even replace it with your own System Settings AppleScript app that has no badge, but launches System Settings when clicked.

But even that's tricky. Apple seems to have gone out of its way to block that very workaround. But there's more than one workaround. Create a script that just does this:

do shell script "open 'x-apple.systempreferences:'"

Save it as an application named "System Settings". Do Finder > File > Get Info on the original System Settings, click the icon, and copy. Then do the same for your System Settings and paste over the default application icon. Now you have your own System Settings launcher. No more red badge.

Disable all Automatic Updates via System Settings (except security updates).

Then disable WiFi and make Ethernet inactive before opening the Terminal and running:

softwareupdate -l

When software update is unable to reach the server (it will hang for a couple minutes), it will eventually remove the little red badge from the Dock icon.

You can now re-enable WiFi and Ethernet.

DO NOT open the Software Update preference in Settings because doing so will cause it to check for updates and restore the red badge notification to your dock. If this happens, start from the top of these instructions.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a good idea unless you keep an eye on macOS software updates via social media and/or RSS feeds because your system is now only receiving critical backported security updates, and you may miss additional minor OS updates for macOS 15.7. Know thyself and use at your own risk.

(a hat tip to reddit)

Here's a link to a github repository for exactly this purpose.

https://github.com/travisvn/stop-tahoe-update

That should stop things from progressing for awhile, I believe the dev claims 90 days using MDM or config profiles. After the absolute disaster IOS26 was/is, I do not blame you one bit.

You can Delay the notification for up to 90 Days provided you enrol the computer in a Mobile Digital Management Service ( MDM for short )

But Stopping the Notification on a Permanent Basis - No

Some methods require MDM or enterprise tools — many home users won’t have that.

The “delay” via configuration profile is time-limited (commonly up to 90 days). After that period, the option may re-appear. HCS Tech

of-the-stack wrote:

None of these will get rid of red notification in settings sadly.

Only one that would technically not show the notification is "Focus workaround", but that will not work for me. I want a cleaner solution.

Any "scripts" with setting flags have been gotten rid off by apple so they don't work on newer versions.

I would simply ignore it...

you can try — delete this plist from your Finder >Go>Go To Folder copy and paste:

 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist 

delete this plist and reboot and compare yur results

or from the Terminal.app copy & paste:

sudo softwareupdate -l --all --force --reset-ignored

(please note your psswd will not echo on screen—type it in anyway to proceed)

relaunch System Preferences>Software update

if this issue issue for you to be proactive you can file a bug report / submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

If you are referring to the system settings icon in the dock, a workaround posted a few years ago that still works for me at least is to remove that icon from the dock, make an alias in the application folder and place that in the dock instead.

You'll need to download Sequoia (or an appropriate OS compatible with your mac) to a thumb drive and reinstall it.

try

How can I stop the 'Updates Available' no… - Apple Community

How can I permanently get rid of this "Upgrade to macOS Sequoia" notification? : r/MacOS

more

disable macos 26 tahoe upgrade notification - Google-

Tahoe Apple’s way to shadowbox a lot of access Mac users used to have. And turn everything into an iPhone.

Have you tried

sudo softwareupdate --schedule off

You can just turn it back on occasionally to check for sequoia updates.

--reset-ignored is not available:

softwareupdate: unrecognized option `--reset-ignored'

leroydouglas wrote:

of-the-stack wrote:

None of these will get rid of red notification in settings sadly.

Only one that would technically not show the notification is "Focus workaround", but that will not work for me. I want a cleaner solution.

Any "scripts" with setting flags have been gotten rid off by apple so they don't work on newer versions.

I would simply ignore it...

you can try — delete this plist from your Finder >Go>Go To Folder copy and paste:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist

delete this plist and reboot and compare yur results

or from the Terminal.app copy & paste:

sudo softwareupdate -l --all --force --reset-ignored

(please note your psswd will not echo on screen—type it in anyway to proceed)

relaunch System Preferences>Software update

if this issue issue for you to be proactive you can file a bug report / submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

Limnos wrote:

Same for me with Sequoia 15.7.3 I don't know that I ever saw a "nag" to upgrade. If I go to Settings > General > Software Update, I see Tahoe but if I have to do that to see it I don't consider it to be a nag.

Just because you haven't been nagged yet doesn't mean you won't be. It also doesn't mean you won't be upgraded against you will. Eventually you'll start getting notifications. I'm still running Sequoia on one computer and got my first upgrade nag the other day. I'm very careful with those notifications now. There's a "learn more" button. You must click the button. If you click anywhere else in the notification then you'll be upgraded then and there.

There used to be a trick floating around to hack a system default to tell the system that you've already been nagged. I tried to set it to the future, but that didn't work. It detected that, reset it, and nagged me right away the next day. I'll try a launch agent to reset my nag date to yesterday every day.

I seem to remember reports of just downloading the installer would remove the nagging. Perhaps just making a blank file named “Install macOS Tahoe.app” in the Applications folder would do it. I have no way to test that.

Xrival wrote:

These nags are driving me crazy. I looked into the command mentioned above and the softwareupate command does not seem to exist on my computer. Does it need to be installed ?

You may consider referring the posting just above you own posting

You can delay this for up to 90 Days

neuroanatomist wrote:

FWIW, on one of my Macs that is still running 15.6.1, I am no longer seeing notifications to upgrade to Tahoe.

Same for me with Sequoia 15.7.3 I don't know that I ever saw a "nag" to upgrade. If I go to Settings > General > Software Update, I see Tahoe but if I have to do that to see it I don't consider it to be a nag.