Apple has a knack for annoying users until they upgrade to the latest operating system. And they’ve kicked things up a notch recently. Banner notifications for upgrading to High Sierra and Mojave don’t even have a dismiss button! You have to click on the Details button to open the App Store. Needless to say, this gets frustrating very quickly. If you’re in no mood to upgrade to the latest macOS release any time soon, follow the guide below to remove macOS upgrade banner notifications for good!
Two Ways to Stop macOS Upgrade Banner Notifications
Stop MacOS Upgrade Banner Notifications Using Terminal
This is the end all method. Just fire this command in Terminal and you’re set. As this is a sudo command, you’ll need to enter the password first.
Open the Terminal app and paste in the following command.
sudo mv /Library/Bundles/OSXNotification.bundle ~/Documents/ && softwareupdate –ignore macOSInstallerNotification_GM
Stop MacOS Upgrade Banner Notifications Using Finder
In another method, we can use the Finder to move the library files responsible for showing the notification. But before doing it, you should first back up your Mac.
Step 1: Open the Finder app on your Mac and click on Go -> Go to Folder.
Step 2: Type the following path and click on Go.
/Library/Bundles/
Step 3: Find the file named “OSXNotification.bundle”. Click on it while holding the Command key and drag it to another location like Documents or Downloads. Keep the file around for the future. Don’t delete it.
Step 4: Authenticate your admin account to move the file.
Step 5: The Bundle folder will no longer show the file.
Step 6: Now open Terminal and enter the following command.
softwareupdate –ignore macOSInstallerNotification_GM
Step 7: Hit Enter to execute the command. Exit the terminal.
Now you’ve successfully disabled the macOS upgrade banners.
How to Disable macOS Update Notifications
The process above will take care of the big macOS releases. But what if you’re tired of seeing notifications for new smaller updates to the OS? There’s a way to disable them as well.
By default, macOS checks for new updates and downloads it automatically. If you turn off this feature, it will automatically stop notifying you about new updates.
If you’re using anything macOS Mojave, open System Preferences and select Software Update. Then click on Advanced button and uncheck the Check for Updates option.
If you’re using a version of macOS that’s before macOS Mojave (macOS 10.14), open System Preferences and click on App Store. Here, uncheck the option that says “Automatically check for updates“. If you want, you can just disable the “Download newly available updates in background” option. This will still check for new updates but won’t notify you about them.
How Often Do You Upgrade macOS?
Do you upgrade macOS on day one? Or do you wait for months or years before updating? Share with us in the comments below.
