How to turn off prompt to upgrade to Catalina Software Update notification?

Well, then Apple must have changed something in Mojave (i am still on Sierra on this particular MBP). My other Mac is my testing machine and it is running Catalina.

As an aside, Apple decided some time ago that everyone should embrace the latest OS and nothing will change that. The user needs to be proactive if they do not want to do that and that means having, as an easy and preferred method, a bootable clone of their system on an external drive so they can erase and revert if necessary. That is also a good reason to wait with an upgrade a week or so or simply install the new one on an external drive to see how well it works.

I might add that:

3) Restart your computer

is not necessary.

You only need to reset the Dock by running:

$ killall Dock

in Terminal [see answer on: apple.stackexchange.com].

It's not like with MS Windows where you must restart for changes to take effect.

So in my experience, the badge on the Software Update icon in the System Preferences pane persisted until reboot. The killall Dock command (without reboot) only took care of the icon in the Dock.

MarkoNewMacUser wrote:

I might add that:

3) Restart your computer

is not necessary.

You only need to reset the Dock by running:

$ killall Dock

in Terminal [see answer on: apple.stackexchange.com].

It's not like with MS Windows where you must restart for changes to take effect.

Sorry, I cannot locate it on demand; can say however, that I recall reading that Apple notifications can not be controlled as the notification alerts/badges on other applications can be, at SysPref>Notifications options.

Perhaps another participant has also read this, to confirm it; or you can comb that place and all the links to that topic in the 'Help' tab to see if you find this information directly yourself; or google it perhaps.

(I imagine that anyone who might also have read this info would not be following this Q&A though.)

My 'solution' is to remove Sys Pref access from the dock so I don't have to see the badge, and to enter SysPref through Launchpad (which is very quick!) or at the Apple icon > SysPref.

Happy sailing.

I expect that ignoring the Software Update for "macOS Catalina" would also stop showing update notifications at all. Running the "defaults" command and killing the Dock isn't a permanent solution (and not a user friendly one), because it starts appearing again when my Mac wakes up from sleep or is being restarted.

For me, it's clearly a bug that needs to be fixed ASAP as me (and most likely many many other people) don't want to update to Catalina for now.

Here is why this doesn't work for me: After following the first part of the instructions, I am prompted to enter my password. But I can't do that, because there is a password symbol and I can not type where the symbol is.

The password symbol in terminal is a button of sorts. When you click on it, it will open your keychain access app, where all of your known passwords are kept (macOS’s built-in password manager).

when you click just to the right of it, or if you have just hit “Enter” after your previous line of command), you can type in your password, although you will not see the cursor advance with each keystroke in the terminal. This has often caused some confusion with people not that familiar with the terminal. But rest assured that it is taking your input. Same with copy and paste, which also doesn’t give you visual feedback for the password.

Thank you. When I clicked on it, several times, nothing happened. When I tried to move the cursor, nothing happened.

I use 1Password, so I don’t keep any passwords in Mac OS. If the symbol should have opened 1Password, it didn’t.

No, the symbol only opens macOS’s keychain app, and if you never approved any of your passwords to be saved there, then it may not hold any, which is rare. I use both 1Password *and* the keychain.

Try again to copy your password, set your cursor just to right of that symbol in terminal (your cursor will be invisible), then paste and hit return.

The Terminal is not only one of the most important and powerful apps on the Mac (and other *ix (Unix, Lynix, etc.) operating systems, but before there were graphic user interfaces (before Mac OS, Windows, etc.), there was *only* the Terminal to navigate computers and the internet (Before there were browsers and the world wide web).

You wouldn’t have any of that if it weren’t for the Terminal, and while it does require much more of its users than a GUI (graphic user interface), it is still the most powerful way to talk to a computer. Every programmer, for his/her daily work, and almost every casual user of computers, sometimes, has to use the Terminal to accomplish certain tasks. User-friendly or not, it is computings oldest and most venerable and powerful tool.

Also true, but what makes Apple who it is, has to do with only exposing so many possibilities to the user, and keeping those to what is absolutely necessary in order to "keep it simple" (for better and for worse, admittedly)...anything more than that requires "tinkering" by means of tools like Terminal.

But I agree wholeheartedly that something as basic as turning off upgrade notifications to a new generation of the operating system should be ignorable with something as simple as a checkmark next to "Ignore this new version"...basta!

>>almost every casual user of computers, sometimes, has to use the Terminal to accomplish certain tasks. User-friendly or not, it is computings oldest and most venerable and powerful tool<<

Thanks for your help, tillkrueger. We disagree here. I've been using Macs since 1985, when I had a hardware dongle that turned my Amiga into a full-function Mac. I bought a Mac II in 1987. In 30+ years, I think I've used Terminal twice, including this time, when it didn't work.

I tried again. I can not type a password in Terminal in Mojave with my MacAir. My office Mac has Catalina, so I haven't tried there.