How to stop Apple from pushing ios updates to iphone xs

Is your iPhone’s “General ... Software Updates ... Automatic Updates” set to “Off” ???

I use this on my own Xs Max and I’ve not received any updates without first giving my EXPLICIT permission.

(although one DOES have to be careful to read the prompts as they DO tend to lead you to “Accept and Install”

Sorry it wasn’t more helpful.

I worked in an area w/ what I’ll term an “unusual” network infrastructure.

We all learned before arrival to inhibit Apples’s “auto updates” using the aforementioned steps; less we end-up w/ “bricked” iPhones until we returned to a “more normal” area of mobile communications.

I received alerts to “update” my iOS for several months before actually doing so; so that “method” at least worked for me and my colleagues.

Updates being “forced” upon you certainly sounds like something’s amiss.

Aha, now I understand.

Sorry, I’m pretty sure that “inhibiting automatic updates” only stops the actual install.

I’m fairly confident the the “download” was already completed.

It WOULD be nice to inhibit the download altogether; so as to prevent the “prompted but inadvertently installed” scenario.

It is VERY easy to step into that “trap.”

Yes. That’s exactly it.

The red reminder “badge” stayed in-place.

The “nag” prompts asking you to upgrade trailed-off after a certain amount of time (maybe a week) ...

... but would come back when the dot-1 or dot-2 “patches” of the original upgrade was released.

They too trailed-off after another week or so; but the red badge always remained.

I would have preferred to prevented the download and the “nag” screens altogether.

We were after all consciously NOT upgrading for a legitimate reason.

YW:

My understanding is that the new “Exposure Notification” components within iOS are only the structure to support tracing apps which would need to be dowloaded and installed separately.

https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ExposureNotification-FAQv1.1.pdf

That in itself can’t track anything.

Apple never told me they never download updates, can you show me where they told you this. And they have at least twice pushed iOS updates due to immediate security concerns which they have the right to do. The government can already trace your iPhone non-anonymously, the API just provides developers a means to do anonymous tracing for the pandemic. And Apple and Google can remotely remove the API when the pandemic is over. The switch to activate the tracing cannot be activated until you download and install tracing software which will still be anonymous.

If you don’t trust Apple it is not reasonable that you are using their equipment. You should buy a flip phone that is cell voice only AND (due to e911) has a removable battery.

Looks like this has been incorporated into the latest iOS (13.6)

It appears that the user can now inhibit “auto-downloading” in addition to “auto-installing”