ios 9 automatic download making me furious

Thank you so much!

@SergZak said:

You can delete the auto-pushed update under:

Settings/General/Storage & iCloud Usage/Storage/Manage Storage. Pick the iOS update from the list, tap on it and tap Delete App.

If you are running iOS 7 or 8, the exact location mentioned above may not match exactly since it was changed a bit in iOS 9. I'm sure you'll be able to find it with what I provided.

Also, be warned that it may indeed be re-pushed to your device again without your permission nor knowledge so keep checking the section above and delete it again.

My wife and I both have iPhone 6, and I wanted to stay on iOS 9.2.1 because my wife had horrible issues with 9.3.1

Today, my iPhone 6 rudely changed the "slide to unlock" message to "slide to upgrade" (which FORCES you to accept the upgrade or you don't get to use your phone at all). I tried turning the phone off and on again, but each time I would check the General - Software Update setting, it showed that the update was in progress and would be completed X minute (counting down: 7, 6, 5 ...) -- I knew I had to act quickly or my phone would have been permanently stuck with the newer version.

Thankfully, I found this thread, and your article specifically gave me the information that I needed to STOP the upgrade that will still in progress. -- I have now turned off the OTA upgrade capability, and I know how to quickly delete the upgrade if Apple tries to force it on me again without permission.

Freedom isn't free, but it's worth the price.

Thanks,

Doug

> I tried turning the phone off and on again, but each time I would check the General - Software Update setting, it showed that the update was in progress and would be completed X minute

Are you saying you turn off the phone while it is installing iOS update and your phone still runs fine?

> I needed to STOP the upgrade that will still in progress

How do you stop iOS upgrade while it is installing?

> I have now turned off the OTA upgrade capability

How?

Hi @ShagCA

Maybe I should clarify -- I was able to stop the upgrade WHILE IT WAS STILL DOWNLOADING. As soon as I saw that the new version was being dowloaded, I powered off the phone (thinking it might stop the download and upgrade process), but when I turned the phone back on, it resumed the download process automatically. -- I probably could have paused this process by putting the phone in Airplane mode. -- I'm pretty sure that if it had ever reached 100% of the download, it would have taken control of the phone and started to overwrite my current iOS version, and at that point, I would not have been able to turn off the phone or stop the upgrade at all.

Before I even tried to delete the partial download file, I decided to turn off the automatic upgrade feature (I referred to this as disabling the OTA ugrade feature in my earlier post, but that is only possible if you are jailbroken). I was able to do this by connecting my phone to my computer, launching iTunes, and choosing the options for ignoring updates (as described in PI-blog's post here: Re: ios 9 automatic download making me furious)

After I deleted the partial download file from my iCloud documents folder, the file stopped downloading, and I restarted the phone with no issues.

For people who jailbreak their phones, there are special apps in the Cydia store that will ignore upgrade notifications and remove the red indicator that shows up when upgrades are available. -- My phone isn't jailbroken (at the moment), so I have to be careful to avoid upgrading to the latest version. Thanks to this thread, I now know that I can stop the process by putting the phone in Airplane mode, disconnecting the USB cord if I'm plugged into the PC, finding the new upgrade file in my iCloud documents folder, and quickly deleting it.

That makes a HUGE difference. I thought you interrupted iOS installation and the device survived. That's a miracle.

As far as I know, a non jailbroken device can not stop iOS automatic download while it is charging, connected to the internet and there's enough free storage space. I don't know anything about jailbroken device.

Just to contribute my method of stopping the download.... There is an option to tell the iPhone not to use your phone data service for downloads and I did so that left the only method to download was WiFi so I just turned off my WiFi router and the dl stopped. I would not abort the update once it has started though you would then have half an os on your device... and that may make it difficult to get it up and running again. Allthough Apple may have taken precautions in this situation....

I put my iPad in flight mode before charging. This is the easiest way to prevent the sneaky 300+ MB point release updates from downloading in the background without my permission.

If I forget to put in flight mode, I manually delete the update from the manage storage area. This prevents the annoying pop-up reminders about the software update.

It's my device, and my bandwidth. The principle here is important. I will download and install iOS software updates at my choosing, not Apple's. So far the flight mode trick works for me and prevents the annoying reminders and stops the update from downloading. Other suggestions here to mess with router settings etc, are not practical.

Here's a solution for the (very, unfortunately) specific situation that you are using an iOS device such as an iPad tethered to a rooted Android phone and you don't want iOS updates eating your mobile data.

open the Android file manager, navigate to /system/etc and open the "hosts" file using text editor and add the following line to the end of the file:

127.0.0.1 mesu.apple.com

this will block all connections to apple's update server when your iPad is tethered to your phone.

despite loving apple generally, and loving my iPad as a media consumption device, having this sort of control over my cellphone is why i could never have an iPhone :-/

Man, I don't know if you already got any solution, but I think this is what you need on your network!!

Check Option 4
http://osxdaily.com/2016/01/04/stop-ios-software-update-notification/

Good luck!!!!

Not true man, i've deleted the update 6 times this week. Make the math. It downloads at his first chance. I guess it woulda been 7 times if i had the ipad plugged one more day.

Apple IOS is typically designed for those business/non-technical users. Think about this: if you do not update IOS via OTA, how are you going to do this? Using a PC? That is too technical for those business/non-technical users. And Apple will not cater for you, it only caters for the majority business/non-technical users. As you get more experience in dealing with smart-phones, and become more and more technical into smart devices, Apple IOS will be less and less suitable to you. You might want to consider switching to Android or Windows phones.

There is absolutely no way to turn off automatic download of IOS updates unless you explicitly block IOS update IP in your Wifi router. And this feature is extremely nasty, "silently downloading hundreds of megabytes of data via Wifi without user consent, without even letting user know". It drains your battery and surely does not care whatever data plan, Wifi bandwidth limit, or personal preference you have.

As you become a more and more technical person, you will gradually discover more nasty IOS secrets. Here is another one: whenever a new IOS update is available and you don't update, your standby battery drain will increase; in my case, with Wifi/3G all turned off, my iphone can last 5 days when there is no outstanding IOS update, but once IOS knows there is a newer version IOS, the circled "1" appears on the setting icon, and after my current IOS firmware signing window expires (which typically takes a few more days), my iphone can only last 3.5 days. The reason is because Apple always tends to "force" users to update their devices to the latest version IOS, that is why they impose firmware signing window so that no user can fallback to an earlier IOS version. Otherwise, whatever new efforts they put in cannot be seen by the users, so gets wasted. But their problem is that, the latest version IOS often has some serious problems and might be even worse than previous versions.

Well, putting your iphone in airplane mode can solve the problem temporarily, but you cannot receive SMS/phone calls. This is not acceptable by most people.

There's so much misinformation in your post I don't know where to start. The last OTA update was 50 MB. NOTHING is downloaded over Wifi unless the phone is connected to power, so the download cannot drain your battery. There is mor misinformation, but given these I think it's safe to discount everything else in your post.

Firstly, the last OTA is IOS 9.3.2, on iphone 6/S it is 89.4MB, not 50MB.

xuancong wrote:

Apple IOS is typically designed for those business/non-technical users. Think about this: if you do not update IOS via OTA, how are you going to do this? Using a PC? That is too technical for those business/non-technical users. And Apple will not cater for you, it only caters for the majority business/non-technical users. As you get more experience in dealing with smart-phones, and become more and more technical into smart devices, Apple IOS will be less and less suitable to you. You might want to consider switching to Android or Windows phones.

There is absolutely no way to turn off automatic download of IOS updates unless you explicitly block IOS update IP in your Wifi router. And this feature is extremely nasty, "silently downloading hundreds of megabytes of data via Wifi without user consent, without even letting user know". It drains your battery and surely does not care whatever data plan, Wifi bandwidth limit, or personal preference you have.

As you become a more and more technical person, you will gradually discover more nasty IOS secrets. Here is another one: whenever a new IOS update is available and you don't update, your standby battery drain will increase; in my case, with Wifi/3G all turned off, my iphone can last 5 days when there is no outstanding IOS update, but once IOS knows there is a newer version IOS, the circled "1" appears on the setting icon, and after my current IOS firmware signing window expires (which typically takes a few more days), my iphone can only last 3.5 days. The reason is because Apple always tends to "force" users to update their devices to the latest version IOS, that is why they impose firmware signing window so that no user can fallback to an earlier IOS version. Otherwise, whatever new efforts they put in cannot be seen by the users, so gets wasted. But their problem is that, the latest version IOS often has some serious problems and might be even worse than previous versions.

This post is funny. And so full of the stupid and the wrong. Only non-technical people use iPhones? Seriously? Not to mention speculation about the reason behind Apple policies. You really think Apple stops signing older versions of iOS because they're afraid no one would upgrade? How does that even make sense? If no one upgraded, it wouldn't matter if they kept signing the old version or not.

xuancong wrote:

Firstly, the last OTA is IOS 9.3.2, on iphone 6/S it is 89.4MB, not 50MB.

A distinction without a difference. Either way, it is not "hundreds of megabytes".