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Sequoia 15.4: watch out for automatic software updates

I

ignatius345

macrumors G3
Original poster
Aug 20, 2015
8,175
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If, like me, you like to control when your software updates install (vs. having them happen automatically, watch out for this:

tempImageADwBMt.png


The text reads "Your Mac has been updated to macOS Sequoia. Future software updates will be automatically downloaded and installed for you as they're released. You can manage this in Software Update settings."

In other words, if you click Continue, it enables automatic software updates. Only Download Automatically is the non-default option, de-emphasized on the bottom left corner.
 
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I do this already on both my Mac and PC. Automatic updates are the first thing I check and disable after every update.
 
Doesn't happen if you restrict Software Update with a configuration profile
AutomaticDownload - false
AutomaticallyInstallMacOSUpdates - false
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/softwareupdate
Apple Configurator https://apps.apple.com/app/id1037126344
iMazing Profile Editor https://apps.apple.com/app/id1487860882
iMazing - Create or edit Configuration Profiles for iOS, macOS, tvOS, or watchOS
https://imazing.com/guides/how-to-create-or-edit-apple-configuration-profiles
I have disabled “Install app updates from the App Store” as well.
SoftwareUpdateSettings.jpg
 
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It shows you a Software Update Complete and tells you this and gives you a link to turn it off.

I manually test in case a new update breaks my production software so I will always turn this off.
 
pshufd said:
It shows you a Software Update Complete and tells you this and gives you a link to turn it off.

I manually test in case a new update breaks my production software so I will always turn this off.
Click to expand...
Right, just pointing out that if you have updates set to manually install, it's easy to click through this dialog box and inadvertantly change your setting.
 
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It looks like this is going to be the case for system software updates from now on.

That is, with EVERY update, Apple is going to set all the "automatic options" to ON.

It will be up to the user to go in and disable them after the update is installed.

I'm wondering if at some point in the future, Apple will remove even the option to disable auto-updates.

It's all part of the slow but [looks like] inevitiable process of the Mac OS being transformed into "iOS with a Finder" ...
 
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Fishrrman said:
It looks like this is going to be the case for system software updates from now on.

That is, with EVERY update, Apple is going to set all the "automatic options" to ON.

It will be up to the user to go in and disable them after the update is installed.

I'm wondering if at some point in the future, Apple will remove even the option to disable auto-updates.

It's all part of the slow but [looks like] inevitiable process of the Mac OS being transformed into "iOS with a Finder" ...
Click to expand...

Or Windows.

I use a Garmin watch and they've had serious bugs since summer 2024 so a lot of us use software from spring 2024 but we have to do a few things to make sure that our watches don't get updates. I think that with macOS, the thing that I would do is go back to Sonoma if Sequoia had serious problems (for me) that didn't get fixed.

I'll just turn it off every time because I can't afford to lose my production systems without notice. I have a test machine and I upgrade that and test my software before upgrading my other systems.
 
What comes to unpatched system with zero-day bugs vs bugs introduced with new updates it is believable that latter option is seen as lesser evil - as automatic updates make patching these new bugs simpler as well.

In my line of work I have to deal with MDM environments having multiple platforms and Mac's are by far the worst what comes at the state of updates if automatic upodates are not enforced by policy. It is not surprising to see machines not only with same system version which it was bought with but without any updates at all. With Windows it has been simple since 10 came out as automatid updates are essentially enforced by default.

Enforcing updates means the need to deal with new bugs if they appear, not doing so means continuously hunting for unpatched machines. It is hard to imagine that automatic updates would not be enforced if device is in corporate use and managed by MDM solution...
 
nmt1900 said:
What comes to unpatched system with zero-day bugs vs bugs introduced with new updates it is believable that latter option is seen as lesser evil - as automatic updates make patching these new bugs simpler as well.

In my line of work I have to deal with MDM environments having multiple platforms and Mac's are by far the worst what comes at the state of updates if automatic upodates are not enforced by policy. It is not surprising to see machines not only with same system version which it was bought with but without any updates at all. With Windows it has been simple since 10 came out as automatid updates are essentially enforced by default.

Enforcing updates means the need to deal with new bugs if they appear, not doing so means continuously hunting for unpatched machines. It is hard to imagine that automatic updates would not be enforced if device is in corporate use and managed by MDM solution...
Click to expand...

I worked for a big cap tech company several years ago and the policy on macOS updates was to not update until about six months after the feature releases came out. Sometimes it was nine months.

The reason was that the company had to validate and modify their security software and development environment to work with new versions of macOS.

With my systems, I validate programs on one system before upgrading my production systems. I had an update break one of my programs and had to do a complete restore from Time Machine and lost several hours because of that.

I'm good about doing updates but getting updates by default doesn't work for me as there's history in macOS breaking things for me.
 
Yes - major releases have often had to be kept back but fortunately there's a policy for that as well - but most non-knowledgeable users do not have any system updates installed if machine is unmanaged.
I have seen 2019 machines having Catalina 10.15.1 on them in 2025 as they came out with it. In better cases they might even have 10.15.7 - and only thing that starts to bother these users is inability to update web browsers and they are not able to understand what's wrong...
 
nmt1900 said:
Yes - major releases have often had to be kept back but fortunately there's a policy for that as well - but most non-knowledgeable users do not have any system updates installed if machine is unmanaged.
I have seen 2019 machines having Catalina 10.15.1 on them in 2025 as they came out with it. In better cases they might even have 10.15.7 - and only thing that starts to bother these users is inability to update web browsers and they are not able to understand what's wrong...
Click to expand...

You were kicked off the network if you were running an unsupported operating system.
 
That is exactly why properly managed automatic updates (with deferral periods etc) are right way to go.
 
Sorry for offtop but be happy you were able to update.

First time in my 15 years of MacOs user (and Patcher) I have bricked Mac M3Max just after update (from previous to latest MacOs)… so have to erase the whole disk as recovery partition is old and macOS version disk not downgradeable and no Mac nearby.
Disk Utility First aid has not helped, was unable to enter Recovery Mode… beautiful disaster :D

That’s why I am also not a fan of auto updates.
 
addamas said:
Sorry for offtop but be happy you were able to update.

First time in my 15 years of MacOs user (and Patcher) I have bricked Mac M3Max just after update (from previous to latest MacOs)… so have to erase the whole disk as recovery partition is old and macOS version disk not downgradeable and no Mac nearby.
Disk Utility First aid has not helped, was unable to enter Recovery Mode… beautiful disaster :D

That’s why I am also not a fan of auto updates.
Click to expand...

I've had my Mac bricked a few times on updates since 2008. One time I was in the office and I just brought it over to the Apple Store (very convenient in that it was under ten minutes away). They unbricked it and I took it back to the office, restored from Time Machine and ran it again and it worked.

It's rare but it happens. But it's nice to be able to do it on your schedule.

One of the huge complaints about Windows 10 was that you couldn't prevent updates and a lot of people went through some extreme gymnastics to prevent them.
 
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nottooshabby said:
Anyway to turn this off if I don't want to constantly update Sequoia
Click to expand...
Try from Terminal
Code: 
defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate UserNotificationDate -date "2035-01-01 00:00:00 +0000"
and
Code: 
defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate MajorOSUserNotificationDate -date "2035-01-01 00:00:00 +0000"
reboot.
 
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