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

Hi Venusta, no problem, I like to help.

I also come from the world of Amiga, where I learned my chops in design and 3D animation, first with Sculpt 3D then with Lightwave...and I used the same dongle as you did, so I know where you come from. If you have managed to only use Terminal twice in all those years then I commend your ability to stay clear of situations that require it. That's truly remarkable. But if you ever need to recover from a corrupted partition table, or lost your Recovery partition or find yourself in other terrible low-level system disasters, then someone with deep knowledge of Terminal can really save you from a world of pain. I am a total Terminal noob, and anything more complicated than what we are talking about here requires me to reach out to the community in search for a kind Terminal jockey with some empathy and time to spare. I owe much to those kind individuals who have, in the past.

Terminal hasn't changed much through all the various iterations of macOS, so it shouldn't make a difference whether you use it on Mojave or Catalina. It seems like there is something else going on if you can't input your password.

What do you see when you are typing, and what happens after you hit "return" after you typed your password? do you end up on a new command-line in Terminal after hitting "return"? Can you copy and paste the last 5-10 command-lines from your terminal session here? It would make it much easier to see what's going on in your Terminal session.

"sudo" stands for "super-user do", and precedes commands that require the so-called "root" permissions to do system-level changes...because anything and everything can be done with root permissions (like formatting a drive, erasing all of its content, or changing the ownership of a file or user-account, etc.) it requires one to input the system administrator's password first before the command following sudo is executed.

The potential severity of sudo and how loosely it is often used by users that don't really know what they are doing (and don't get me wrong, I *am* one of those users) has caused Apple to make access to processes that require it more and more difficult to protect the integrity of its operating systems (one of the main reasons why Apple's macOS is much less prone to viruses and malware). In Catalina they took it one step further and placed all important system files in a special system container that can't be changed at all by a user. This is both good for many users, as it makes attacks and tomfoolery even more difficult, but also terrible for many developers whose software and utilities have relied on being able to place certain files inside the system folders to function properly. Apple really is a blessing and a curse when it comes to controlling the user-experience.

>>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.<<

This was a new piece of information, so I tried it. In response, I got this:

Password:

Sorry, try again.

Password:

Sorry, try again.

Password:

Assuming this is the password for the computer, I know it and typed it correctly.

So perhaps that half worked. I had previously thought that clicking on the password symbol was doing nothing and that it was impossible to deselect it, or to select anything else. But in the end the result is still a failure to save the command.

I have automatically keep my Mac up to date unchecked and I have been getting the notices of updates. What other automatic updates do you have disabled? I still want to get security updates for Mojave and Safari updates.

Install MacOS Catalina.

macos users, catalina won't support 32-bit apps anymore, and in general might break your workflows

don't install unless you really understand what it means for you

Same issue here. Cannot get rid of the red 1 from the sys. pref icon in Dock. Kind of annoying. For now I just removed the sys. pref. icon from the dock

It was pointed out that I had an extra ' in the original post.

 sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina" is the command to run.

It won't clear the flag in system preferences either.

Thank you that did the trick. Hopefully when all the 32-bit apps are updated then moving to Catalina can be schedules.

What is the name of the downloaded file that is placed? I wonder if it would be enough to place an empty dummy file there would be enough for it to stop noting.

The remedy that I am referring to is secondary clicking on the System Preferences icon in the dock and choosing:

remove from dock.

I reported this flaw to Apple. I suggest others do the same.