Q: Disable OS X Updates Available notification

Seriously. I mean ***, Apple?! Why must I get the same notification every 15 minutes or so? Why must I choose between having to constantly get rid of this thing so that I can close tabs or use whatever part of the UI it is covering up, or have no checking for software updates at all?! Why can't I say how often I want to be reminded. Once a day or once a week would be fine.
This is seems a totally unnecessary annoyance.

This is the answer (from chumpster69), though in my OS the extremely not obvious solution had the right-click option "Hide Update" as the only choice.

Couldnt agree with you more. And it seems like mac is becoming elitist to me!

Bacically pop ups are harrasment! That is why ten years ago they baught in disable pop up windows on web pages you look at. But they are back and on your desktop!!!

Imagine every time you walk down the same street some guy jumps out in front of you with a sign saying update to the new mac system!. It would agravate you no end. It could end up in a phisical altercation.

Apple causing everyone to keep pace with them. Its elitism!

Apart from being an abusive intrusion into your personal space where you are forced to change your personal behavior in order to stop the abuse.

If you do not have the finances or time to update all your applications, it could cost you a large amount of money and time if you update to get rid of their pop ups.

I updated to the "wonderful" maveriks , and in the process lost ten years of invoices , documentation , and numerous other applications that did not work anymore.  Causeing me to loose months of work and lost income dealing with the problem. Not only that if you were using any adobe products they suddenly didnt work. esp photoshop! then in order to use them you have to get on the pay by the month system with adobe in which you sign up for a life of having money deducted from your bank account every month.

It seems to me that much of the gains from the updates these days are lost by the problems they cause!

By the way,while I spent 20min writing this I have had to spend about a minut all up getting rid of several of the "OS X Updates Available " Popup!! Even though I disabled it in system preferences.

Hey maybe apple system development should read their customers posts!

If you are just annoyed by the pop-up notices, a easy fix could be disable the pop-up instead of try to dismiss certain update. Go to systems-->notification find the app you do not want to see notification and choose "None" as the alert style. Or you can completly kick any app from the notification center.

You can disable most unwantted pop-ups throuth this way. For the update popups, I believe you should try to disable notification from iTunes.

Hope this works for you.

Message was edited by: molemore

Molemore - you solution would be perfect for me (and the OP) if only Apple had decided to include App Store in the Notifications list.

Alas they have not and therefore you cant alter the App Store notification prefs.

Annoying Apple!

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

The problem is that you can't control notifications for software updates (App Store) via the Notification Center.

For me, it's infuriating to get the software update notifications. I'm working on something and I get an alert — great, what am I going to do, shut everything down in the middle of my workday? No. For me, it's sufficient to have been notified; at some point in the next week I'll find time to install all the updates. But I can't just dismiss the update; it keeps popping back every day or hour or whatever and it's really distracting when I'm trying to concentrate.

It's *really* a disruptive way to let me know. I'd actually be fine installing everything automatically — I just want it to happen as I'm shutting down my computer and am done for the day / week, instead of 1pm on a Tuesday!

I don't want to turn off the NC entirely — there are some things I want to get disrupted for (like a call or meeting).

It's just a bad design / process to make software updates simultaneously aggressive and poorly-timed.

You can eliminate that by setting Software Update/ App Store to not automatically check for updates.

Thing is, I WANT it to check for updates. I just don't want the notifications in my face all the time — interrupting in the middle of the day, only dismissable for an arbitrary period of time. (They're just as likely to come back at an equally bad time.)

Enjoy.

Solutions for both Mountain Lion and Maverick.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106149/how-do-i-permanently-disable-not ification-center-in-mavericks

Wanted to add my voice to the list as ... me too.

I've been postponing that darn "software updates available" for days and weeks, since I got Mavericks (up from Mountain Lion), till I find it suitable to not have my system cut away for an update randomly. .

Whoever thought  10min, 2hrs, tomorrow - were appropriate. How hard would it be to add the option of n hours or n days???

How hard would it be to let it download in the background AND then give another prompt to apply update now or in x hours or with next startup?

Out of frustration I let it update today. Only to find my internet bogged down, worked on a spreadsheet, answered the phone, looked away from the screen, poof, black screen? Update being applied for the next 20 min. Forget about that spreadsheet you were editing, billing you have to do and a couple mails you have to reply.  Just wait it out.

It is not the end of the world, but it is completely non-productive and utter crap that after the download it cuts away, no warning, no delay, ... you're out for however long it takes.

That's the kind of thing which makes people turn updates off altogether.

Anyway. I sent Apple another note about this horrible software alert notification system and update implementation. Hopefully it was already on the Yosemite fix list as one of the new 200 "features". If not, I hate to think about more years of frustration and productivity loss everybody endures on work systems.

PS: Come to think of it. I probably had updates or notifications disabled under mountain lion. ...  oh the joys of a newer computer and newer OS

  I am trying to stop the pop up window that is asking me to upgrade to Maveriks OS.  My IT dept. at our ISD says I cannot upgrade to Maveriks as our other software is not compatible with it.  I have to stay with Lion.  The pop up window asking me to upgrade is very annoying and frequent.  I am not seeing any answer to how to stop the pop up window asking me to upgrade to the new OS. I have asked around. I disabled the check for auto upgrade in system preferences and it did not stop the pop up window.  This must me something different.  It is very difficult to get an answer to a MAC question. 

This sounds great, but there is no updates tab on the tool bar.  It is the new OS I am trying to avoid.

This sounds just like what I am looking for.  However, there is no do not disturb tab.  Can you give more information?

Er...

For those that can't read the post 5 posts above, I'll post the solution again.

Mountain Lion (terminal):

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

killall NotificationCenter

Mavericks (terminal):

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui KeepAlive -bool False