do not want to upgrade .... notification in System Preferences

Question

Level 3

816 points

do not want to upgrade .... notification in System Preferences

i am happy using Big Sur, and the persistent upgrade for Monterey in Software Update - although present - did not show a notification bubble on System Preferences - until today.

I don't wish to upgrade to Monterey and want to turn off the notification. The upgrade is optional as far as I see, users should not have to be steered to it as the only way to get security and os updates for their current OS choice.

how can the notification for Monterey be disabled/turned off and if the installer winds up downloading itself on my mac it will occupy 12GB which I do not want.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Dec 1, 2021 5:34 AM

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Answer 1

tbirdvet

Level 6

17,060 points

Dec 1, 2021 11:00 AM in response to zero7404

If the red bubble bothers you then remove the System Preferences icon from the dock then right click on the System Preferences icon and make an" alias". Put the alias in your dock (it will not show any red bubble).

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,090 points

Dec 1, 2021 5:49 AM in response to zero7404

Ignore it. Nothing is stopping other updates for Big Sur, though there won't be many. If it magically downloads itself, just delete it.

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Answer 3

Owl-53

Level 10

102,373 points

Dec 1, 2021 7:41 AM in response to zero7404

One may have good reasons to not upgrade to Monterey at this time - fair enough.

Do realize - as Big Sur was released November 2020 - there is finite length of time before Security Updates will stop being offered.

This is normal, as each newer version of macOS is released, Apple Stops supporting older versions.

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Answer 4

zero7404 Author

Level 3

816 points

Dec 1, 2021 8:57 AM in response to Owl-53

thanks all for the feedback. i understand that updates for security and OS stability are on limited basis for supported OS's.

my issue is i do not want to forge forward at the pace Apple has set, mainly because i want to maximize the use i will get from my current intel-based mac.

keep upgrading every year and this pushes ppl closer to upgrading their machines sooner than they'd normally would ....

in addition, features come and go, functions added and broken, etc. i have something that works for me and the platform serves my vm's as well so i will stay on Big Sur.

if the business model is to drop support for older OS's faster than what I've seen over the past 7 years on macs, then i guess that could be a problem for the current mac population.

a good example of functionality taken away from under user's noses is when apple took away the

--ignore

from the softwareupdate command, and it did this without transparency to users during an update to mac OS Catalina.

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