Sonoma installed itself

Happened to me yesterday. I was running Monterey, did a simple restart, and it automatically upgraded to Sonoma. Fortunately, I haven't encountered any problems since the upgrade, but still...

The same thing happened to me. Not everything works in Sonoma, so I have to return to Monterrey. Quite disgusting from Apple, I will lose 2+ days of work!

Yep. Happened to me today. I had to restart due to an app update and when It did, I had Sonoma. Never asked for it and have Automatic updates turned OFF.

This happened to me this morning. Very frustrating. I have to be careful with my work VPN software to make sure it's compatible. If it automatically updates, I can't do that.

My 2018 MacBook pro, running Ventura, also updated itself to Sonoma this week. I remember seeing an annoying notification that Sonama was available, and then I was notified that it would be installed in 60 seconds after my mac automatically rebooted.. I wasn't ready to upgrade to Sonoma because not every Mac in our household is capable of running it. It didn't reboot on its own, but later when I initiated a reboot it installed Sonoma.

This happened to me as well, to my bewilderment! I was running Monterey and it downloaded Sonoma in the background and then restarted the machine and went through the installation process all by itself, basically shoving Sonoma down my throat!!

I had disabled automatic updates since I have hundreds of packages installed through Macports and now I am forced to reinstall from scratch and hope for the best that they would all work (highly unlikely!).

I am really upset right now and I think that after Google even Apple is now getting so bad!!

Is this a maneuver to make my Macbook Pro go slower and then try to convince me to buy a brand new one?!?

Same thing happened to me early this morning. Was running Monterey, restarted, now on Sonoma. Had "Automatically keep my Mac up to date" unchecked, but didn't have "Download new updates when available" unchecked. Honestly I always thought the "download" option was just for security updates and not operating systems.

Ditto. I had automatic updates disabled. Was running Monterey 12.7.2 on a Mac that is set to restart automatically at 4:30 a.m. daily for backup purposes. When I checked the computer around 8 a.m. yesterday I was surprised to find it had upgraded automatically to Sonoma 14.2.1. This was before 14.3 was released later yesterday, BTW. I was holding back on upgrading that Mac for reasons similar to those many have posted in this thread. After I realized what had happened, I started researching and found this thread. Discovered I was not alone. Is this a bug, I wonder? I've now completely disabled all automatic checking/downloading/running of Software Update on every Mac I own, just as a precaution.

Yup. Me too. - January 24, 2024

I was watching some streaming video and it stalled, then Safari was not cooperating, RAM was maxed out, fan was running loud, so I restarted. It took a much longer time than usual, so I restarted with the Shift key for safe mode. It did eventually boot up in Safe Mode (WIFI was off) but with the wrong wallpaper and sign-in appearance. I restarted it normally. Sure enough, it had spontaneously updated from Monterey to Sonoma.

I had auto-updates disabled and pointedly avoided "upgrading" beyond Monterey, only allowing security updates to Monterey.

Happened to me today, automatic upgrade disabled, I can't believe such error is present in a system. I need the old system, so I'm looking on options, how to downgrade.

As a bonus today my Windows 10 PC can't be updated anymore, because of Microsoft bug. These companies are becoming more and more horrible for people, who use their computer for work.

There are far more than "several" people reporting this, my very large company has been grappling with it auto-updating no matter what, and after wiping and reinstalling, it happens again. It says you can defer it up to 7 times.... well I deferred once, and next morning I opened the lid to find the Sonoma desktop was there. No permission asked. Sonoma is not compatible with the other software we are running, and the nightmare is that it's been weeks and has still not been fixed.

1. If you turn off WIFI and/or disconnect Ethernet before rebooting, does it still force the upgrade?

2. Has it happened to Big Sur or earlier systems?

I for one have only seen/heard of it in Monterey... hasn't happened to me in Monterey or any OS, but spend most of my time in Mojave.

I lost all my logic projects. I’m hurt 😔